Thank you for looking after my fave
by doesitweighmorethanaduck
Summary: Post-canon, could be seen as canon-compliant if you ignore heroes reborn. Ando and Kimiko broke up years ago; now Hiro and Ando are dating and Kimiko has a girlfriend. Now it's time for Hiro to meet said girlfriend, but there's a complication: she's a huge Ninth Wonders fan, and she loves the "character" of Hiro. How's this going to turn out!
1. Chapter 1

The familiar, cheerful-sounding whistle that meant he'd just received a text broke through Hiro's haze of sleep as his phone lit up on his bedside table. _Not this again_ , he thought as he fumbled around for his glasses, not wanting to turn the lamp on for fear of waking the person sleeping beside him.

Once he had his glasses on, he propped himself up with a pillow and punched in the passcode for his phone: 1-1-4-4-1-5. Ando had been delighted that Hiro had selected a stronger password than the ones he usually used… until he'd realized that the numbers were 1, 14, 4, 15—which corresponded to the letters in his name. "Hiro, you can't just have my name as all your passwords," Ando had sighed. "You're going to get hacked one of these days, you know!" Hiro had simply shrugged; he was terrible with coming up with passwords, and Ando was always on his mind, so why not?

Having friends (some closer to acquaintances or friends of friends, but they'd built up stronger connections over the past few years) on the other side of the globe meant a lot of calls and texts in the middle of the night. Hiro was more than accustomed by now to being jolted awake at 2:00 am by his phone buzzing. Usually it was something like Matt asking if they could babysit for him and Janet while they were out someplace, or Peter asking if Hiro had ever tried a waffle pop (he hadn't until then, which was now one of his biggest regrets. Waffle pops were _amazing_ ). Once, Claire had called asking for help writing a paper on Japan.

Occasionally it was something more serious, like a warning that the world was in danger again accompanied by an explanation of how they could help. These calls could come at any time of day or night, and they were the ones Hiro dreaded the most. He loved being a hero, but he hated the danger that came with it. Naturally, Hiro was always willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, but he was far less comfortable putting Ando in danger along with him. Leaving Ando behind was out of the question—Hiro had done it in the past, and he still felt a pang of guilt every time he thought of Ando waiting alone for him day after day while Hiro was in the past. One way or another, Hiro couldn't stand to make his boyfriend suffer.

On the other hand, saving the world had been how Hiro and Ando had realized their feelings for each other—as a matter of fact, Ando had nearly married the wrong Nakamura sibling. It was much like the relationship of Marty's parents in Back to the Future; if it wasn't for Samuel Sullivan, they never would have fallen in love.

Ever since that day at the carnival, Hiro had regretted never having held Ando's hand before. It had felt warm and steady yet gentle, and the red sparks of his then-only-a-friend's super-charging ability weren't the only sparks Hiro had felt between them. They didn't speak of it for a long time, but Hiro knew Ando had felt it too. Not long after, Ando had broken off his engagement to Kimiko, who later admitted to being glad they hadn't stayed together. Kimiko had a girlfriend now, and although it had at first been a little odd realizing he was in love with the man who'd been his best friend since childhood, Hiro couldn't have been happier with anyone but Ando.

Hiro reflected on this now as he read the text he'd just received from Noah Bennet—a photo of Hiro as a young boy, standing next to his father. " _Found this picture on my old computer and had to transfer it to my phone to show you_ ," the text bubble beneath the picture read. Hiro smiled and texted back, " _thank you! I'll have to show this to Ando when he gets up_ :)". Then he turned his phone off and tried to fall back asleep.

Next to him, Ando was still asleep, unwoken by the buzz of Hiro's phone. Hiro watched the slow but steady rise and fall of his sleeping boyfriend's chest, imagining how Ando would react to the photo. Hiro had never seen that picture of himself and Kaito before, and he didn't remember when it had been taken, so it was like finding a little piece of his childhood that he hadn't known was there. It gave Hiro a warm, fuzzy feeling in his chest that counteracted the dry chill of winter which still hung heavy in the outside world.

In the morning, the first thing Hiro did was show the photo to Ando. "Super cute," Ando said in response to being shown the picture; he gave Hiro a nod of approval which meant it was time to put the phone away and stop waving it in his face.

Hiro was more satisfied than most might have been to have won a compliment from Ando, who showered him with compliments from day to day even if all Hiro did was exist. Hiro had an equally infinite supply of praise and adoration for his boyfriend of several years (he couldn't remember exactly how many, but he knew it was climbing higher every day). Obviously at this point they both already knew the other loved them, but every single affirmation of the fact was still positively enthralling. It served as a reminder that, yes, they were dating and in love! Maybe it was childish and silly (things that Hiro had been accused of being many times, and couldn't deny the accuracy of) to get so excited whenever the man he shared an apartment and a bed with and kissed on a day-to-day basis still loved him, but it never failed to brighten Hiro's day.

Although he had never met Kimiko's girlfriend in person, he hoped that she was making his sister as happy as Ando made him. Hopefully Hiro would get to meet this woman someday, but until then, he could only imagine that she was nice. He'd hoped they could meet up over the holidays, but it had fallen through.

 _Oh, well_ , Hiro thought as he held hands with Ando on the bus ride to work. _Maybe someday…_


	2. Chapter 2

Tokyo winters weren't very nice. They were dry and cold but not cold enough to provide an excuse to stay home from work. Hiro took refuge in the comic book store on his days off, although he rarely had enough money to buy anything. Luckily, his payday was coming up, so he'd be able to afford the issue he had his eye on.

Sometimes he dragged Ando along, but lately Ando was taking part-time side jobs to rake in a bit more cash than they made at Yamagato. Hiro was a bit jealous that Ando was the breadwinner in their relationship, but he didn't want to start another tedious "I don't want to be the sidekick" argument. Plus, he appreciated the extra financial support. Hiro was an extremely impulsive shopper—just the other day he had bought a rubix cube that remained untouched on his bedside table next to his collection of Star Wars figurines.

As he perused the manga section of the comic book store, searching for a trashy shoujo series to take home for he and Ando to poke fun at (it was something they did to pass the time when there was nothing good on TV and they had nowhere to go), Hiro glanced up and realized one of the store's employees was staring at him. Slightly unnerved, Hiro gave the employee a polite little bow and turned back to the shelf of manga.

"Ah, I see," the employee gasped after a minute. "You must be the version from the bad future, right? Oh, that whole arc was so emotional! It still gives me feelings every time I reread it."

Hiro took another look at the comic book store employee, whose name tag read Anzu. She was rather tall—she was almost a full head above Hiro—and her hair was short. She looked very boyish; Hiro noticed that she was wearing a pin on her collar with a rainbow flag and the words "CERTIFIED BUTCH" printed on it in English. Hiro breathed out a small sigh of relief; he could gather from her pin that at least she wasn't going to ask him out.

"It's amazing," Anzu breathed, leaning in a bit closer. Hiro flinched away instinctively. "Sorry, sorry," Anzu muttered. "It's just... you look so much like him! How do you pull it off?!"

Hiro had a growing suspicion he already knew what she was referring to. As a matter of fact, he'd had an experience similar to this... when was that again?... He realized with a jolt that it had been over a decade since his brain had been scrambled and he'd gone to a comic book store in Kansas to find out how to regain his memories. "I'm getting old," he mumbled aloud.

"So, was I right?" Anzu pressed. "Are you cosplaying as Future Hiro from that one volume? Or could you just not find someone to cosplay as your friend?"

Hiro was unsure how to answer. He wasn't cosplaying at all—he was just a not-so-regular guy in a comic book store. Thankfully, his phone rang just then, saving him from having to explain the situation. Anzu stepped away to let him answer the phone in peace and have a private conversation, but she giggled at Hiro's ringtone (an anime theme song) as she walked away.

Hiro answered the call without checking to see who it was from. "Hi! Hiro Nakamura speaking," he said.

"Hey, babe. When are you coming home?"

Ando's voice was a bit distorted through Hiro's phone, but it was still instantly recognizable. His boyfriend's familiar cadence was cathartic for Hiro as he replied, "I'm just at the comic book store right now. I'll be there soon."

"Could you teleport over here, actually?" Ando asked, sounding nervous. "I kind of need you right away."

"Okay, sure," Hiro agreed without thinking it through. "Bye bye, honey. See you in a sec," he said as he ended the call.

After quickly scanning the store to make sure nobody was watching—especially not that Anzu girl—he squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the small, one-bedroom apartment he shared with Ando. An instant later, Hiro stood in the living room, where the TV was playing a soap opera with the volume turned way down low. Hiro's first impulse was to turn the volume up so he could hear what the characters were saying, but he didn't see the remote. Then Ando came in from the kitchen with the remote in his hand.

"Uh, hey, good timing," he muttered, as if he hadn't just called Hiro and told him to get over there right away. "Kimiko's here, and she wants to talk to you."

"Oh." Hiro wasn't quite sure what to say to that; it didn't seem all that urgent, but it did explain why Ando seemed so on edge. His relation to Kimiko was a complicated, awkward one. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure it's nothing." He paused to give Ando a quick peck on the cheek before heading into the kitchen to see what his sister wanted to say.

Kimiko was rocking back on her chair and twirling a strand of her hair around when Hiro came in to sit down beside her. "Hello, little brother," she said, eyes darting up to meet Hiro's before dropping back down to her lap. The last time Hiro had seen her this nervous was probably when she'd had to call up relatives to explain that her engagement was off because her fiancé had fallen in love with her brother. "I suppose you're wondering what this is about…"

Hiro nodded, suddenly anxious. He couldn't imagine what could be so important that Kimiko would drive over to his apartment to talk about it. They'd never been particularly close, and still weren't for the most part, considering how many devastating events had shaped their lives that should have brought them closer together. Both of them having dated the same guy probably had something to do with it. Hiro often wondered if Kimiko resented him for stealing her fiancé, but considering that she had only been with women since then, he got the feeling both Nakamura siblings had benefited from the incident.

"Well, remember back when I was… when Ando-kun and I were…" Kimiko was clearly struggling to word her sentence, which was quite understandable. It was hard to find a good way to say, _"hey, remember how I used to be engaged to the man you are currently dating?"_ to your younger brother without making it sound odd. "Remember how I asked you to give me away at the wedding?"

"I remember," Hiro said, wondering where this was going. Trying to lighten the mood a bit, he put on an exaggerated frown and said, "I knew it—you're planning to steal him back!" Kimiko gave him an obviously fake, confused-looking smile and shook her head. Hiro wondered if she thought he was serious. "I'm joking," he explained just in case.

"…I know."

The atmosphere was growing more awkward by the second. Part of Hiro suddenly wanted to go back in time a couple minutes and start the conversation over, but he didn't like to use his powers when it wasn't necessary. "Why are you bringing up what you asked me to do then?" he asked instead. "Are you going to get married?"

Hiro didn't expect Kimiko to answer that she was, but in retrospect, he couldn't think of any other reason she would have mentioned it. "Yes," she said quietly, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks. "My girlfriend proposed to me last week, and I said yes. So, I was wondering if you would give me away at the wedding—unless you're dying and haven't told me, like the last time," she added with a teasing glint in her eye.

"Onee-chan, that's amazing!" Hiro cried, jumping up to throw his arms around his sister. "Of course I'll give you away! When's the wedding?!"

"We haven't quite worked it out yet," she admitted. "We're thinking in the spring. You and Ando should drop by our place sometime! I don't think you two have even met her yet."

Now that Hiro thought about it, he hadn't—in fact, he didn't even know Kimiko's girlfriend's _name_. He felt kind of bad about it; this must have been another side effect of not being close to his sibling. He didn't really want to bring that up now, though, when things had finally stopped being awkward and started being exciting. "We have some time off next week," he said instead—they'd been planning to spend it outside of Japan, preferably somewhere warm, and maybe in a different time period, but he was sure Ando would understand. "Is Wednesday okay?"

"Wednesday is fine by us," Kimiko said, eyes sparkling. "Drop by in the afternoon and we can put some snacks out for you."

Hiro could tell she was excited at the prospect of introducing him and Ando (who was pretty much part of the family, and always had been in one way or another) to her girlfriend. Hiro was pretty excited about it, too—he always loved meeting new people, unless of course they were bad guys. But he doubted his sister would fall in love with a bad guy, so he had nothing to worry about.

"That sounds great," Hiro said, and he meant it. "See you then!"


	3. Chapter 3

When Wednesday rolled around, Kimiko texted Hiro the directions to get to the house she and her girlfriend (now a fiancée) lived in. Hiro was impressed by the fact that she could afford to live in a house rather than an apartment—no doubt owed in no small part to her much more lucrative career.

It seemed as though Kimiko was better off than Hiro in every way: living arrangement, transportation method (at this point Hiro would probably never learn how to drive, but at least it meant he could make "I can't drive; I'm gay" jokes), not to mention her impending matrimony. Hiro and Ando had discussed marriage in the past, but they didn't see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future. What they had now was sort of a common-law arrangement, which there was nothing wrong with, but Hiro was still a bit jealous of his sister taking her engagement into account on top of everything else.

"So, do you think Kimiko has told her fiancée that she used to be with me?" Ando wondered as they rode the bus to Kimiko's neighborhood. One of these days they might be able to afford a car, but looking at their current financial situation, it wasn't likely to happen soon. "And if not, do you think we should mention it?"

"Would you tell her if you were Kimiko?" Hiro pointed out. "You two didn't end up getting married, so there's no reason to bring it up."

"I guess not…" Leaning back in his seat, Ando laced his fingers through Hiro's—a casual gesture that still made Hiro blush even after all this time. "I guess I haven't really given much thought before to how weird this whole situation is."

"Huh?" Hiro tilted his head, staring at his boyfriend in confusion. "How could you not think about it? I was almost your brother-in-law!"

Ando's eyes widened as though that had never occurred to him before. "Yeah, that's exactly what I mean! I never thought about it like that before," he said. "How are we gonna explain it to her if it does come up?"

Hiro was a bit worried about that himself, but he didn't think it would be too hard to explain. Feelings change, right? Surely Kimiko's new fiancée, whoever she was, would understand. "Maybe we could start off by telling her about the extended Petrelli family," he suggested. "Our situation will definitely seem more normal by comparison."

In the end, they didn't end up talking about the Petrellis, or about the situation with Kimiko and themselves. When they got to the house, Kimiko opened the door and welcomed them in with a huge smile on her face. "Come right in," she said, gesturing down the front hall. "Anzu is out in the living room. She's been dying to meet you!"

Anzu… the name was very familiar. Hiro was trying to place where he'd heard that name recently when he stepped into the living room and realized with a jolt that it was crammed from floor to ceiling with comic books and memorabilia. Sprawled lazily out on the couch in the middle of it all was none other than the woman Hiro had encountered at the comic book store the day he'd learned of Kimiko's engagement. Anzu's nose was buried in a comic with a very familiar cover—too familiar.

"Hey, Kim," Anzu said to Kimiko, not glancing up from her volume of _Ninth Wonders_. "Was that your brother at the door?"

Hiro froze in place, breath caught in his throat. Ando gave him a quizzical look, and Hiro pointed to the comic Anzu was reading. Understanding dawned in Ando's eyes, and he gritted his teeth, tugging Hiro out of Anzu's line of sight. "Hey, what are—" Kimiko began. Hiro raised a finger to his lips, not wanting to speak in case Anzu recognized his voice. She may have been willing to believe that he was just a very dedicated cosplayer when she saw him at the comic book store, but now? She'd know that wasn't the case, especially since he had Ando with him this time.

"Hiro, do you know that girl?" Ando whispered, glancing around the corner to where Anzu was now lowering her comic and hopping off the couch. When she moved from her position, Hiro realized there was a giant poster of his face drawn in a sparkly anime style on the wall behind her.

"I don't know her, exactly," Hiro said. "I met her last week at the comic book store—she works there—and she thought I was a cosplayer."

"Huh? Why would she think you were a—"

Ando's question was cut off when Kimiko grabbed his wrist and dragged him out into the living room, beckoning for Hiro to follow in a way that made it clear he didn't have a choice. "I have put up with your shenanigans for a long time," she hissed, "but I have had enough with you two acting strangely and not telling me what's going on! Now stop acting like children and introduce yourselves to Anzu!"

They were both in Anzu's line of sight now—there was no use trying to hide anymore. Hiro bowed stiffly, wondering if Anzu would recognize him. His eyes kept straying back to the poster of him on the wall. It was clearly modeled after the way Isaac Mendez had drawn him rather than his actual face; the only thing that made it clear this was an image of Hiro was the fact that his name was spelled out above the image in swirly pink font.

Hiro glanced back to Kimiko, who was now pulling up a chair for Anzu to sit on facing the couch. Surely his sister knew that he was the person from the comics her fiancée loved so much, right? So Kimiko must have explained the situation to Anzu already. In that case, he decided he may as well try to get to know her a bit. "Hello, Anzu-san," he greeted her, taking Ando's hand to make it clear they were together just in case Kimiko hadn't told her. "It's nice to finally meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too," Anzu said slowly, looking Hiro up and down. Brow crinkling, she asked, "I don't know you, do I?"

"No," Hiro said, maybe a bit too quickly. He sat down on the couch, and Ando took a seat next to him, still looking very openly confused and uneasy. Hiro squeezed his hand and whispered, "Don't worry; she doesn't recognize us yet. Try to act normal."

"Hiro," Kimiko said sharply, "Is there something going on here I should know about?"

"I don't think so," said Anzu, but she kept glancing at Hiro as if trying to figure something out. It reminded Hiro of when Matt was using his psychic abilities. He briefly wondered if Anzu had powers, but somehow he doubted it. Surely Kimiko would've given him a heads-up about that if it were the case.

Suddenly Kimiko snapped her fingers. "Ah—you're wondering about the poster, aren't you? Well, don't worry; my girlfriend isn't obsessed with _you_ ," she told Hiro. "It's a character from a comic series she loves who happens to look like you."

"He's got the same name, too, doesn't he?" Anzu piped up. "I've gotta say, it's a pretty cool coincidence."

She flashed Hiro a friendly grin, which he returned with somewhat less nervousness than he'd held a moment ago. It was hard to believe Anzu was willing to accept it as a coincidence, but it was better than having to explain the truth. That would require explaining that there were people out there with superpowers, which would probably mean Hiro admitting that he and Ando were such people, and this whole situation was already far too bizarre. He felt bad about covering up the truth, but for now, at least, it was better that the people sitting on the couch in Anzu's living room were kept separate in her mind from her favourite comic book characters.

"I think I'll get some tea and snacks," Kimiko said, getting up to head into the kitchen. "Hiro, why don't you and Ando get to know Anzu a bit?"

Upon hearing Ando's name, Anzu did a double take. "That's seriously your boyfriend's name?!" she gasped; unwilling to tell an outright lie on top of going along with Kimiko's untrue explanation, Hiro reluctantly nodded. "Oh my God, that cannot just be a coincidence," Anzu said, leaning forward in her chair. Then, sucking in a sharp breath, she cried, "I've got it! Mendez-san must have based his characters on you two! Did you _know_ him?!"

"Yes, we did… kind of," Hiro said, relieved to at least be able to be truthful in this area. It still wasn't exactly the truth, but it was the closest a non-special person should be entrusted with knowing. Anzu probably wouldn't believe the truth anyway. Even his beloved Ando hadn't believed Hiro at first all those years ago, when Hiro had told him about being able to freeze time. "We didn't know him very well, but we made quite an impression on him, so he based his _Ninth Wonders_ characters off of us."

"I think he liked Hiro better," Ando jumped in, squeezing Hiro's hand. "Which is why Hiro's character was more important."

"Ahh! I knew it," Anzu squealed, pumping her fists in the air in a similar fashion to the way Hiro sometimes did. Hiro wondered if she had adopted the gesture from reading about his adventures. "This is _so cool_! Why didn't Kim—oh, that's what I call Kimiko-chan, just so you know—tell me about this?!"

 _That's what I'm wondering_ , Hiro thought, but he didn't say it aloud. Instead, he tried to change the topic. "So, I see you present as butch…" he began, scooting forward a bit on the couch and adjusting his glasses. "Where did you get your pin from?"

"Oh, this?" Anzu tapped her _CERTIFIED BUTCH_ lapel pin. She was clearly startled by the sudden shift in topic, but she went along with it. "I got it at pride a few years back. Do you think I deserve to wear it?" She threw her head back and stuck her leg up in the air, imitating a model.

Hiro chuckled; despite the extreme mess of an awkward situation this was, he did genuinely like Anzu from what little of her he'd seen. "You definitely deserve it," he said, nodding to her red-and-black checkered flannel shirt and sweatpants. "If you had a superpower like Hiro—the one from the comic, not me—, it would be being butch."

"Thank you," Anzu giggled, dipping her head in gratitude. "That's what Kim says, too!"

Things went fairly smoothly from that point on. Hiro and Ando talked with Anzu for a bit, and although Ando still seemed understandably nervous about Anzu somehow figuring out the truth, Hiro would come to the rescue by jumping in with an abrupt change in topic whenever the conversation circled back to _Ninth Wonders_ : "So, you two weren't together at the time Mendez-san was alive…?" "No… by the way, how did you and Kimiko meet?"; "You know, it's funny; I always dreamed of meeting you two in real life, and—" "Oh, that reminds me, I had a very odd dream a while back!"; and so on. Hiro was sure he was coming off as very rude, and he felt horrible about that, but it was better for everyone involved if Anzu didn't pry.

All in all, the meeting went unexpectedly well. What should have been an issue had never even come up, but a new, bigger issue had emerged instead. Hiro didn't think Anzu's interest would be a problem, though. It was just a shame he had to keep her in the dark about things…


	4. Chapter 4

Once he and Ando were back at their apartment—Hiro didn't feel like waiting for the bus, so he teleported them home once they were outside after making sure nobody was around—Hiro pulled out his laptop and did some research. Exactly how popular had those _Ninth Wonders_ comics been? He'd only had a few people recognize him or Ando from those comics before, and never outside of America—only when visiting his westerner friends. Sure enough, a quick search for fan content revealed barely anything, except for an old DeviantArt account which had been deactivated for quite some time called Sapphic_chestnut.

"Ando, babe, come take a look at this," Hiro called, beckoning his boyfriend over as he pulled up a piece of fanart dated from March 2007. "It's us."

The picture, which looked to have been drawn in MS Paint, was a redraw of a _Ninth Wonders_ panel showing Hiro and Ando in the Versa. In the redraw, there was a heart between the two, and a tiny squiggle of a signature at the bottom of the image was barely readable as _Anzu Noguchi_. It didn't take long to figure out that it was the same Anzu.

"So she shipped us, huh?" Ando muttered. "I guess us being together now must make her happy, then."

"I don't think she's that kind of shipper," said Hiro. "Fujoshis tend to be straight."

"Anyways, keep going," Ando said, tapping Hiro's laptop screen. The outside of the laptop was covered in cute stickers Hiro had put on, to the point where one had to look at it closely to see what colour the laptop actually was. "I want to see what people thought of me—of us!"

"I don't know…" Hiro scrolled down to check if there had been any comments on the panel redraw, but the only one was somebody asking what the original panel was from. Anzu hadn't replied to the comment until months later, and rather than stating the name, she'd simply said "it's really good! You should check it out :D". "Doesn't it kind of seem like an invasion of her privacy? Plus, there's not much to see," he added, waving his hand at Anzu's gallery.

Most of her work was for more popular things, with a heavy concentration of femslash ships—which made sense, since she was a lesbian. She had a folder labeled "9thWs", which Hiro guessed stood for _Ninth Wonders_ , that he considered considered clicking on, but his guilt about looking at Anzu's old work without her knowledge got the better of him and he closed the webpage before Ando noticed the folder. Before closing it, though, he saved the page so he could come back to it later if need be—just in case. He didn't see himself needing to come back, but it was never a bad idea to be prepared.

The next day, Hiro's phone kept buzzing throughout the day while he was at work. He didn't check to see who was texting him, since he had somewhat of a bad track record at work due to his tendency to disappear for days or weeks at a time without warning, and he feared that getting caught looking at his phone would lead to him getting fired. When he finally checked during his lunch break, though, he saw that the person who'd been texting him was an unfamiliar number.

Scrunching up his face in confusion, Hiro scrolled through the messages. Luckily, his confusion was short-lived; it didn't take long to figure out who they were from.

 _"So cool meeting you & your bf yesterday! :D"_

 _"(Hope you don't mind me texting you, btw! Kim gave me your # after you guys left)"_

 _"Sooo… were YOU the guy I saw at the comic book store last week?"_

 _"Bc if not I'd REALLY like to track that guy down and compliment him on his cosplay"_

 _"Hello?"_

 _"Oh btw I found some old fanart I drew of you in like 2006 or 2007 I think"_

 _"***the character based off you I mean! Not the real you"_

 _"Would you like to see it?"_

Anzu's most recent message was dated from only about half an hour ago, so Hiro decided there was no harm in replying. He told her he'd love to see her art—and it wasn't a lie. Now that he knew Anzu was comfortable sharing her old fanart with him, he felt a lot less guilty about looking at her old DeviantArt account. It was interesting to see how she'd felt about the real-life events that had transpired all those years ago.

Anzu texted Hiro a picture of the fanart in question a few minutes later. It didn't look half-bad, considering the low resolution. In the drawing, Hiro was winking and doing the "nya" pose while wearing a _Star Trek_ T-shirt. Hiro wasted no time in complimenting Anzu on her art, although she replied shortly after with _"It's super cringey… I regret drawing you in such a cringey way tbh! :("_ Hiro assured her that it was fine; besides, he thought the "nya" pose was kind of cute.

After wrapping up his text conversation with Anzu, Hiro saved her drawing of him onto his phone and popped into Ando's cubicle to show his boyfriend the picture. Ando barely spared a glance up from his computer screen to smile at Hiro; they both dropped by the other's cubicle so often that none of their coworkers even bothered to nag them about it anymore. Hiro gave Ando a peck on the forehead and plunked himself down on his desk.

"Oi, Hiro, do you have to go and mess up my desk?" Ando scolded, tidying up the paperwork he'd been doing which Hiro had messed up. "I love you, but..."

"Look at this picture Anzu drew of me," Hiro interrupted, not wanting to get into a discussion about his shortcomings. He was well aware of them, but he preferred to ignore them—not out of vanity so much as worry that he wasn't a good boyfriend. Surely if Ando's gripes with him were that serious, they wouldn't still be together, right?

"Anzu drew that, huh? It's cute." Ando stared intently at the phone, his cheeks turning rosy as he zoomed in on the grainy image. "I think she captured you well."

Hiro giggled and poked at his boyfriend's cheek. "You're blushing," he teased in a singsong voice. "Am I really that cute?"

Ando gave him a look that read, _do I really need to answer that?_ Hiro grinned and hopped off the desk and into his boyfriend's lap. Technically they weren't supposed to kiss at work, so Hiro froze time around them to prevent coworkers from noticing. As their fingers interlaced, Hiro got a little shock, and he jerked back to see tiny red sparks springing up at Ando's fingertips.

"Ah… sorry about that," said Ando, clenching his hand into a fist to stop the sparks. "I just thought it'd make things more interesting."

"More _painful_ , is more like it," Hiro muttered, wincing at the slight sting the jolt had left in his fingers.

He thought back to the bad future he'd once seen in which Ando killed him, but he quickly banished those thoughts from his head upon receiving a tender, apologetic kiss on the lips which he returned without hesitation. Whatever universe that future had existed in, the possibility of it ever coming to pass had probably come and gone long ago. For now and forever, Ando was Hiro's loving boyfriend, who Hiro trusted beyond a doubt. Getting hung up on the past (or a snapshot of a potential future from the past) was pointless. Hiro had already been hung up on too many pasts in his life, some of which he'd been in at the time. When he was with his one true love, it was best to live in the present.


	5. Chapter 5

Kissing Ando put Hiro in such a good mood (as it always did) that he completely forgot about Anzu's old fanart of him until he was at home that evening. Looking at the picture again, he noticed that the _Star Trek_ T-shirt he was wearing in the drawing was a shirt he owned in real life. Tilting his head, Hiro tried to remember if that shirt had ever appeared in a _Ninth Wonders_ comic. He didn't think so, but it had all been so long ago, and obviously he'd had other things on his mind… Maybe he could dig out those old comic books soon and look through them again, both for reference and for nostalgia's sake.

Powering off his phone, Hiro thought to himself that the T-shirt was probably a fairly common print—maybe Anzu even owned a shirt like that herself. It was a rather odd coincidence, but it didn't mean there was anything out of the ordinary going on.

Besides, just like how twelve years ago saving the world had been more important than what shirt Hiro was wearing, right now there was something more important than… well, what shirt Hiro had been wearing twelve years ago. Over the next few days, Hiro noticed that Ando was simultaneously being unusually lovey-dovey for that time of year, and spending more time away from Hiro. Hiro had absolutely no idea what was going on, and no matter how much he grilled Ando on the issue, his boyfriend refused to offer any believable explanation.

"Come on, Ando," Hiro nagged his boyfriend while they were washing dishes one evening. "Why can't I get a straight answer out of you?"

Playfully flicking soap suds at Hiro, Ando quipped, "How do expect to get anything _straight_ out of me?"

Hiro wasn't really in the mood for joking around, but he humoured Ando nonetheless. "Fine, fine, how about… can you run something _bi_ me?" In case his emphasis wasn't enough, he added a wink, which got a laugh but still not an answer out of Ando. Sighing, Hiro turned off the faucet and turned to look Ando in the eye. "Baby, please… just tell me what's wrong!" he said.

"Nothing's wrong," Ando assured him. Fidgeting with his dish towel, he added more quietly, "I've just been thinking about things."

That could have meant almost anything, but Hiro's mind immediately jumped to the worst case scenario. "Are you…" Hiro gulped. "Are you going to break up with me?"

"What? No, Hiro, of course not!" Wide-eyed, Ando grabbed Hiro's hand and held it firmly. "Darling, you know I love you!"

"I love you, too!" Hiro said. "That's why I need you to be honest with me!"

Unfortunately, just when it looked like Ando might have been about to open about, his phone rang and he went out into the living room to answer it, holding up his hand for Hiro not to follow him. Disappointed and frustrated, Hiro made a mental note to bring the topic up again later. He didn't like having circular conversations, but some information was too important to withhold like this!

As much as part of him wanted to, Hiro respected Ando's wishes and didn't listen in on the phone call. However, he overheard something about items being in stock and affordability range. _It's probably about something boring, then_ , Hiro thought, relieved to know that at least the phone call wasn't anything suspect. While he was drying up the dishes and putting them away, Ando came back in with a huge grin on his face. Before Hiro could ask what the call had been, Ando hoisted him up a couple centimetres off the ground, eliciting a little yelp of surprise from Hiro, and twirled him around before setting him lightly back down.

"What's got you in such a good mood?" Hiro asked—flirtatiously, but also with genuine curiosity. "Does it have something to do with that phone call, by any chance?"

"Oh, that?" Suddenly Ando's face grew bright red. "It was nothing—just that something I ordered online a while back is ready to be picked up."

The worst-case-scenario part of Hiro began to wonder if Ando was having an affair with someone. That didn't seem like Ando, but Hiro was quite familiar with his boyfriend's love of the ladies. Maybe Hiro really wasn't being the best boyfriend he could be. But the phone conversation, from what little Hiro had heard of it, _did_ sound like it had been about what Ando claimed. Hiro just wondered what it was his boyfriend had ordered.

"Speaking of which, I have to head down to buy that thing I ordered," Ando went on, glancing up at the kitchen clock. "They're closing soon, and if I don't pick it up soon—"

"Say no more," said Hiro, even though he absolutely did want Ando to say more—such as what exactly this mystery item was, but it didn't seem like he'd be getting that information anytime soon. "I'll teleport you over there just as soon as I've got these dishes put away."

Ando's eyes went wide, and he shook his head vehemently. "No teleportation necessary," he said. "I can take the bus. Thanks for the offer, though," he added as he grabbed his phone and keys and ran out of the kitchen.

"Love you," Hiro called after him before turning his attention back to the dishes. Once he'd got the last one put away, he googled _why is my boyfriend acting strangely?_ He wasn't too happy with the results he got. For one thing, a lot of the sites assumed he was a woman—heteronormativity strikes again. He swapped out the word "boyfriend" for "significant other" and hit search again, but the results weren't much better.

Discouraged and generally downhearted, Hiro tried to cheer himself up by flipping on the TV and rewatching an original series _Star Trek_ episode. By the end of it, he felt a bit better, but it wasn't enough to get his mind off his boyfriend's strange behaviour. Sighing, Hiro turned the TV off and sank deeper into the sofa. What was he going to do about all this?

Just then, the door rattled, followed by muffled cursing from the other side. Hiro jumped off the sofa and ran over to the door, which he had locked without thinking when Ando left. "Sorry about that," he said when he opened the door. Then he tilted his head inquisitively at Ando, who was hiding a shopping bag behind his back. "…But I thought you brought your keys?"

"I guess I forgot," Ando muttered. His cheeks were rosy, which might have been from the cold, or from being flustered; Hiro couldn't tell.

"So, what did you buy?" Hiro asked, even though he was fairly certain he wouldn't get an answer. He was proven right when Ando slunk back a bit and muttered something incomprehensible before ducking around the corner and running into the bedroom.

Hiro could have followed him, but he figured there was no point. He needed to respect his boyfriend's privacy, for now at least. Besides, there was no way Ando would keep a secret from him forever. For better or for worse, Hiro would find out what was going on eventually.


	6. Chapter 6

**a/n: before taking this story any further, I should probably note that this is also in a universe where the whole "brave new world" thing didn't happen... or if it did, everyone just kind of... collectivelly forgot about it I guess...**

Since his first encounter with Anzu, Hiro had avoided going to the comic book store where she worked, instead opting to make his comic-related purchases at the store on the other side of town. However, it occurred to him while he was on his way home from work one day that he had no reason to avoid her. He kind of _wanted_ to see her, actually. They'd been texting back and forth for a while now, and it didn't seem like she was getting any closer to guessing the real truth about Hiro. So he decided to stop by the comic book store as an excuse to talk with her.

Anzu was tidying an arrangement of Funko Pops that had been knocked off their table when Hiro walked in. As soon as she saw him, her whole face lit up in a grin. "Hey," she called, waving. "Nice to see you, Nakamura-san!"

Hiro was startled to hear her address him so formally. Even at work, people generally used formal honorifics when talking to him—if they used honorifics at all. "Hello, Anzu-kun," he said, hoping he was correct in using the boyish honorific since she presented in a traditionally masculine way. To his relief, she smiled and jumped into a conversation without comment.

"What are you looking to buy?" Anzu asked. "Something for yourself, or were you thinking of getting your boyfriend a present?"

"Myself," said Hiro, even though he wasn't really planning to buy anything—he'd just wanted an excuse to talk to his future sister-in-law. "Ando isn't really into the stuff I'm into—although I have dragged him into a couple fandoms."

"Oh, really? Like what?" Anzu leaned across the table she was tidying, holding a Funko Pop in one hand and a roll of paper towels in the other.

"Well, the main one is _Star Trek_ —can you believe he likes the reboot movies best?— but I've managed to get him pretty into the MCU as well."

Anzu's eyebrows shot up. "You guys watch a lot of superhero movies?"

"Well, yeah," Hiro said, suddenly wondering why he'd gone and brought it up. "But those movies are pretty mainstream nowadays, right?"

"It's kind of fitting, though, isn't it?" Anzu pressed. "I mean, you were the inspiration for a comic book character, and—"

Before Anzu could finish her thought, one of her coworkers spoke up, interrupting her. "Oi, Noguchi-san!" he called from the backroom where he was carrying a crate of comics. "Quit yammerin' with yer boyfriend an' get back ta work!"

"I told you a million times, Takeshi, I'm a lesbian! I don't have a boyfriend!" Anzu shouted back; her coworker simply grunted and shrugged before moving on with his work. Turning back to Hiro, Anzu wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out. "Man, I hate that guy," she muttered. "I mean, hello?! I'm dating your _sister_ , not you!"

Pushing aside the Funko Pop display, Hiro sat himself down on the display table. Obviously he wasn't supposed to do that, but Anzu wasn't supposed to have stopped working to talk to him either, so they were about even when it came to complying to rules at the moment.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone previously engaged to Kimiko ended up with me instead," he reminded her. "You and Ando could start a club."

Anzu's brow creased and she tilted her head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I was just joking, of course," Hiro said quickly, wanting to be certain that she didn't think he was actually trying to flirt with her. She was honestly quite good-looking, so she may well have had to deal with men trying to pick her up left and right. "I know you only like girls."

"No, not that," Anzu said. "I _mean_ ¸ what was that about Ando and Kimiko?"

Hiro realized with a jolt that he'd never actually gotten around to explaining that whole situation. "Well, you see, they…" He gulped, deciding he may as well just put things a simply as possible. "My boyfriend was dating my sister a few years back, and they got engaged, but they broke it off when Ando and I realized our feelings for each other."

Anzu's face was filled with a thousand questions, but before she could open her mouth to speak, a gray-haired man who looked like the manager popped out of the back room.

Hiro knew he'd be furious to see one of his employees slacking off (not to mention allowing him to sit on the display table), so to save Anzu some hassle, he decided to prevent the manager from seeing her. Hopping off the display table, Hiro grabbed her shoulder and froze time without giving it much thought.

It was a fairly slow day at the comic book store, with only a couple customers, so there wasn't a sudden quiet upon him stopping time as there sometimes was in louder places. Because of this, it took Anzu a moment to notice. "Hiro-san, what…" she began, glancing at his hand on her shoulder. Then she looked past him at a customer who was flipping through a comic, the pages of which were suspended mid-flip along with the motionless customer. Anzu's eyes grew increasingly wide as she looked around the store, and the paper towel roll she was holding fell from her hand and dropped to the floor, where it rolled until it reached the foot of the suspended customer.

"Whoops," muttered Hiro, dread knotting in his belly as he realized the repercussions of his actions.

Anzu stared at him, jaw agape, for a long moment. Finally, she spoke, her voice coming out in an uncharacteristically girlish squeak. "You… you're actually him," she cried, taking a step backwards and bringing a hand up to her head in disbelief. "Mendez-san didn't just _base_ his character off you—the character _is_ you!"


	7. Chapter 7

This was bad. This was extremely bad. Heart racing, Hiro scrambled for a way to write this off. He came up completely empty, of course, because there _was_ no way to explain away his ability. Now that part of the truth was out, he'd have to give away the whole truth—and that would take a lot of explaining.

"I cannot believe you lied about this!" Anzu exclaimed, running her fingers through her short, coarse black hair. Hiro hadn't noticed before, but a few streaks of it were died dark red-orange. "I mean, how could you not have told me that you are _literally a comic book character_ —and one of my all-time favourite characters, no less!"

Hiro blinked in surprise. "You mean that's what you're honing in on?" he asked. "Not the fact that I have superpowers?" He was glad that she wasn't say, dialing up the government to report him, but he honestly felt a little offended that she wasn't more in awe of his powers.

"N-no, I… that's incredible! It's unbelievable! It's just…" Anzu stammered at a mile a minute, wringing her hands. "But if you're actually Hiro Nakamura—the one from the _Ninth Wonders_ series—that all the other characters are real, too! A-and they, and you, and everyone all really has these abilities?! I mean, what the hell, I mean, that's amazing! …Oh, God, but why didn't Kim tell me about any of this?!"

Anzu's cheeks were burning bright red, and her breathing grew increasingly rapid and shallow. Hiro laid and hand on her cheek to feel how hot it was, prompting a startled shriek from her. "You're overheating," he said, frowning. "And if you don't stop and catch your breath, you're going to hyperventilate."

At his words, Anzu sucked in a huge breath and held it for a moment before letting it spill out in an exhilarated rush. Then she broke into a coughing fit, bending over the table and sending the Funko Pop display clattering to the floor. "Oh, no," she moaned, life-changing revelation apparently forgotten. "Now I'll have to tidy the stupid thing up all over again…"

"Ah! Don't worry about that," said Hiro, stooping down to gather the brightly coloured packages into his arms. "I'll help you."

"Th-thanks." Having now caught her breath, Anzu blinked gratefully at him, undoing the top two buttons on her uniform. "I really hate those stupid things," she added after a moment, picking one up and squinting at it distastefully before setting it back down on the table so that the figure was facing away from her. "I mean, just look at those weird dead eyes. I feel like it's staring into my soul."

Hiro nodded, chuckling. "I hate those things, too," he said. "But I've bought a couple in the past when they're the only merch available for a character I like."

"Mmm. Now, when you say you've bought them in the _past_ —"

"—I mean I've bought them previously in my life," Hiro clarified. "I have never travelled back in time to buy a Funko Pop."

Anzu laughed, and for a moment it was like everything was ordinary. But then the laughter drained from her face and she groaned, rubbing her temples, like she'd just remembered how very unordinary this situation was. Her knees partially buckled and she leaned across the display table, supporting herself with one arm—Hiro noted that she had well-defined muscles; she must have worked out a lot. Anzu muttered "Oh my God" to herself over and over while Hiro restacked the Funko Pop display.

He realized how strange this must have been for her on multiple levels. When it came to finding out that someone you knew had some extraordinary ability, this wasn't really how it tended to go in TV shows or movies. This wasn't like at the start of a new season of _Doctor Who_ ¸ when the Doctor's newest companion would discover the TARDIS for the first time. In this case, Hiro didn't have to launch into some long-winded explanation of who he was, what his powers were, and how he used them. Anzu already knew all of that. She just hadn't known that it was real.

After the display was back to approximately how it had looked when Hiro had walked in, he took a step back, laid a reassuring hand on Anzu's back, and unfroze time. When the faint sounds of scuffling feet, rustling pages, and faint murmurs resumed, Anzu let out a huge sigh of relief. Her manager rounded the corner without even sparing her a glance, and Hiro wondered if he would have noticed she'd been slacking off had he not intervened.

Finally, after standing in stunned silence for several long moments, Anzu gathered herself and spoke. "Hiro, I'm not going to go on about how insane this all is, because I happen to know you've already heard it all before. Just… we need to talk more about this, and I've gotta get back to work, so… can you drop by here again at closing time and take me to your apartment?"

It was a bit of an odd request, but Hiro could see no reason why not. He nodded, smiling, and gave Anzu a polite bow before he left. On his way out, he made sure to check when closing time was so he would know when to come back. Then, with a beleaguered sigh, he pulled out his phone and typed in a text message to Ando saying that Anzu knew the truth now. His finger hovered over the "send" button, but then he thought again and deleted the message. He'd tell Ando about this when he got home. This kind of thing was better suited for a face-to-face conversation anyway.

At their apartment, Hiro was a bit surprised to find Ando standing in the bedroom in front of a full-length mirror, apparently talking to himself. He jumped when Hiro rapped apprehensively on the door, but he quickly smoothed himself out and Hiro decided not to ask. He already had more than enough bouncing round in his mind what with Anzu discovering the truth and all.

"Hey, babe," Ando greeted him, putting his arms around Hiro casually and giving him a playful kiss on the nose. "You took a while getting home. Is everything okay?"

"Oh, everything's…" Hiro began, quickly trailing off when he remembered that everything was, in fact, not fine. Coaxing Ando onto the bed so he'd be sitting down, Hiro said as calmly as possible, "Anzu found out about my powers."

"What?!" Springing to his feet, Ando clutched at Hiro's hands, wide-eyed. "You told her? Why?!"

"I didn't _tell_ her," Hiro explained, staring down at the pattern of the comforter. He traced his finger along a long, snaking seam as he spoke. "She just… found out."

Cringing, Ando massaged his temples. "You mean you used your powers?"

"Well, yeah…"

"Hiro, why aren't you freaking out right now? This is bad!" Ando fretted. "I know you think you've got some sort of connection with Anzu because she read your comics, but she's basically a stranger! We can't entrust her with this kind of information!"

"I didn't mean to have her find out," said Hiro. He was getting the feeling that his boyfriend definitely wouldn't be keen on Anzu coming over to their apartment, but he'd agreed, so he may as well introduce the idea anyway. "Speaking of which, Anzu asked if she could come over here when she's done work—she says she wants to talk to us."

"And you agreed?"

Hiro nodded, drawing his knees up to his chest and rocking back and forth on the bed. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I really didn't mean to let the truth out… but don't you think she deserves to know?"

Sighing, Ando pulled Hiro into a hug. "It's okay, sweetie," he said. "I'm not mad at you. I'm just…"

"Exasperated?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Ando sat back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was painted a rosy pink that neither of them liked the colour of much, but painting it would be too much work, and they probably weren't even allowed. Maybe they'd be able to afford a house one day, but it wasn't something in their foreseeable future. "So, what time does Anzu's shift end?" Ando asked after a few moments.

Hiro rolled over to check the time on his phone—5:58. "About ten minutes from now," he told Ando. "How do you think I should get over there?"

"Well, she knows about your powers now, so you might as well teleport to save money," said Ando. "Your bus pass is almost used up, right?"

That was indeed true. Hiro sometimes considered buying a bike so he wouldn't have to rely on public transportation, but he didn't feel like it would be a wise investment. His bike riding skills weren't exactly top-notch, so he was probably better off just taking the bus or train most places for now. It wasn't a glamorous life by any means, but Hiro was certain that someday soon, he and Ando would get their big break that would put them in a financial position to buy a house and a car, and maybe even have enough of a salary to support a family. Before Hiro's daydreams got too far ahead of himself, though, he reminded himself that he was happy with things just the way they were. They'd never be as well of as, say, the Petrellis, but they didn't need to be. All Hiro really needed in life was Ando.

A few minutes later, Hiro went to get Anzu and brought her back to the apartment complex. When they reappeared in the hall outside the apartment, Anzu narrowed her eyes in bewilderment. "Hiro, what's this all about?" she asked, waving her hand around at the off-white walls of the hallway, the paint of which was cracked and peeling. The doors were fairly close together since the apartments were small; a couple of the mailboxes had come completely off the walls and were simply propped up on the floor (which had an extremely threadbare brown carpet) or balancing precariously on the doorknob.

Not entirely understanding the question, Hiro answered, "It's the apartment complex. This one's our apartment," he added, gesturing to the door, which was unlocked. "Come on inside."

He opened the door and stepped inside; though Anzu followed, she kept glancing warily from side to side as if she expected something to jump out at her. Hiro could only assume she had been expecting him to have a better living arrangement. A few years back, he'd have expected that much of his current self as well, but things had kind of fallen apart when his previous apartment had burned down while he'd been out of the country.

"Guess who's here," Hiro called cheerfully to Ando, who was pacing the apartment with heavy footfalls. "It's our biggest fan!"

Anzu's cheeks coloured and she elbowed Hiro in the side. "Don't be like that," she muttered. "As far as I was concerned up until a little while ago, I was the biggest fan of a couple of fictional characters!"

"H-hey, Anzu," Ando greeted her, clearly rather agitated. "Can I speak to you alone for a bit?"

Hiro really hoped his boyfriend wouldn't take out his annoyance with him for letting their secret out on Anzu. She definitely didn't deserve it. To Hiro's relief, though, Ando didn't seem upset with Anzu at all. Rather, he guided her off toward the kitchen and raised a hand for Hiro not to follow. He didn't, but he couldn't help wondering if this had something to do with that mystery item Ando had purchased the other day.

A few moments later, Hiro heard Anzu let out a high-pitched squeal. She and Ando emerged from the kitchen at that point; Ando was blushing and not meeting Hiro's eyes, while Anzu was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, grinning.

"So, uh… I guess we should go over some things now" Anzu said, lapsing into a more serious expression. However, it didn't last long; the corners of her mouth curled up into a smile as soon as her eyes landed on Hiro, who was thoroughly confused.

Clearing his throat, Hiro tried to push aside his questions about what Ando was up to—and what he'd told Anzu to get her so excited. "Yes, there are some things that we must discuss," he said in as businesslike a tone as he could. "What would you like to go over first?"

"Oh, I don't even know where to start!" With a giddy smile, Anzu threw herself onto the sofa, although she winced upon squeezing the ratty cushion. "You guys deserve better than this," she muttered, throwing the pillow onto the floor. "…Anyways, why not begin by telling me when it was that you fell in love?"

Hiro and Ando exchanged a grin. That was one of their favourite stories to tell—and this would be the first time in years that they'd be able to tell it the way it had really happened.

"Well, it all started at a carnival," Hiro began. "A lot of people were in danger, and I had to get them out of there. Well, something you probably don't know about Ando is that he has a power, too…"

"Whoa! Seriously?" Anzu interjected, gawking at Ando. "Never mind how you guys fell in love—I wanna hear about this first!"

The rest of the evening was filled up with Hiro and Ando explaining various events that had transpired after the events of the last _Ninth Wonders_ comic. Anzu listened with rapt attention, occasionally stopping to throw in a comment or two about how awesome everything was—or sometimes, how little sense things made.

At around 6:30, Ando got up partway through Hiro's explanation of how his brain tumour had been healed and pulled out a couple of frozen pizzas from the freezer. Hiro was grateful for this, since they did need to eat but he did tease his boyfriend for leaving the room during that particular recollection. "Hey, Ando," he said, poking his boyfriend's cheek. "Want to tell Anzu how much you cried when you thought I was going to die~?"

"Shut up," Ando muttered, face growing red. "I didn't cry."

"Sure you didn't," Hiro singsonged. Then he put his arm around Ando and gave him a reassuring kiss. "It's okay, baby. It wasn't the first time and wasn't the last, right?"

It was creeping up on 9:00 when Anzu received a concerned call from Kimiko asking where she was. After explaining the situation, Anzu promised to be home soon. Upon ending the call, she dipped her head apologetically—although Hiro assured her there was no reason to apologize; she needed to get home to her girlfriend—and asked if he could teleport her home.

Once Anzu was back at her and Kimiko's house, the revelation of Hiro's secret didn't seem so disastrous anymore. In fact, Hiro was kind of glad that he could be totally honest with Anzu now. Now, if only Ando would be totally honest with _him_ …


	8. Chapter 8

Hiro's long-held question of what Ando was up to came to him unexpectedly on one of the first clear, sunny days there'd been in weeks. At the time, Hiro had been preoccupied with making plans for Valentine's Day, which was approaching rapidly. Between that and Anzu, there were plenty of things for Hiro to think about other than a few vague explanations and a suspicious conversation.

To Hiro's surprise, Ando left work early that day. "Where are you going?" Hiro asked, leaning back in his chair curiously as his boyfriend tidied up his desk and prepared to leave. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," Ando assured him, stopping at Hiro's desk to give him a quick peck on the forehead. "I've just gotta run some errands. Cover for me, okay?"

"Okay…" Hiro muttered; he wanted to ask "what errands?", but Ando was already on his way out the door by that point.

Sighing, Hiro forced his attention back to his work. However, he remained somewhat distracted for the rest of the day. For whatever reason, he felt as if something big was about to happen. The only problem was, he wasn't sure whether it was something to look forward to or something to dread.

By the time the workday ended, Hiro hadn't gotten work done so much as stared at empty Word documents and made little avatars of himself and his friends in online dress-up games. He knew he'd get flack for slacking off, but it was hard to concentrate when he had that odd sense of anticipation hanging over him. Either way, he was more than happy to get home to his boyfriend. As silly as it was, Hiro kind of liked it when one of them had to either stay home from work or work late. Working at the same place meant heading home together as well, which had been fine when they'd been platonic buddies who went home to separate apartments, but felt kind of anticlimactic nowadays.

Upon opening the door and stepping into the apartment, Hiro took great enjoyment in calling out "Hi, honey, I'm home!" This greeting was met with a loud curse from the bedroom, followed by Ando rushing out with his hands behind his back.

"Welcome home, sweetie," Ando said, beaming. Keeping one hand behind his back, he brushed the other along Hiro's cheek. "Um, could you come into the—no, wait, here is fine—no wait, how about in the…"

He trailed off into a flustered mumble. Hiro had no idea what was going on, but suddenly he was pretty sure Ando had left work early not to run errands, but to do whatever he was about to do. Glancing around the apartment, it was clear that Ando was trying to set a certain mood—there was soft lighting, as well as classical music playing in the background.

"If you want," Hiro offered, "I can take us someplace you think would be appropriate."

Ando seemed to consider it for a moment, but then shook his head. "No, I don't need that," he said, speaking in a way that told Hiro he was choosing his words carefully, "Because my love for you doesn't depend on your powers. Even in the darkest times, when I'd be helpless otherwise, it's you who keeps me going."

Hiro wasn't quite sure how to take all this sudden romantic prose. The last time Ando had talked like that was when they'd first started dating. Giving his boyfriend an awkward smile, Hiro asked, "What's this all about, Ando?"

Ando drew in a sharp breath. Suddenly it occurred to Hiro that Ando might be about to break up with him, or tell him that he only had a short while left to live, or some horrible thing like that. But then what was the romantic lighting and music for? Before Hiro could puzzle it out in his head, though, Ando took his hand and got down on one knee.

Looking directly into Hiro's eyes, Ando pulled his other hand out from behind his back. In it, he held a slim silver band—a ring.

"Hiro Nakamura, will you marry me?"

In that moment, everything seemed to slow to a halt. Usually for Hiro when time seemed to stop it was because he'd actually freezed time, but that obviously wasn't the case now. He just wasn't sure what to do… what to say… what to _think_!

Heart beating at a mile a minute, Hiro met Ando's gaze without really meeting it. His eyes may have lined up with his boyfriend's, but he was staring right through Ando into the unforeseen, terrifying future that lay before them. He supposed if he really wanted to know how to answer he could just go a year or so into the future and check, but that seemed kind of like cheating. He just… He'd never been proposed to before…

What if he said no? Would Ando be mad at him? _Should_ he say no? That would be the responsible thing to do, probably. The two of them would never be able to afford an elaborate wedding like Hiro had always dreamed of having one day. But, Hiro realized, that was just the thing—the way their lives were going, they really would _never_ be able to afford something like that. Besides, accepting Ando's proposal wouldn't mean they'd have to get married right away. They could wait on that. But, even though Ando may well have asked him again in a few years' time if Hiro turned him down now, Hiro felt like this was a now-or-never kind of opportunity. Whether it would change his life for the better or the worse—though when he took another look at Ando's beautiful brown eyes, Hiro couldn't see how it could ever make things worse—this was a chance Hiro had to take.

"Yes," Hiro said quietly, his voice catching. Clearing his throat, he tried again somewhat louder. "Yes! Yes, I will marry you!"

"Oh my God, thank you!" Jumping to his feet, Ando threw his arms around Hiro and squeezed him as tightly as he normally only did when they'd just survived some harrowing obstacle. "Hiro, I… you don't know how much this means to me, really…"

Hiro smiled, tearing up a little and he interlaced his fingers behind Ando's back. "I think I have some idea," he murmured. "This does mean a lot to me, too, you know."

They held each other for a moment longer, inexpressible volumes of emotion communicated silently through their embrace. Then they pulled apart and Hiro took off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt, and when he put them back on he looked back up at Ando and excitement bubbled up inside of him to the point where he couldn't stand still.

Bouncing up and down on his heels, Hiro grinned giddily, unable to think of anything to say. It really felt like he should have been saying something right then. The silence was broken only when Hiro's phone rang. "I'll get it," Hiro called as he ran over to grab his phone; his cheeks reddened a moment later when he remembered that of course he'd get it; it was _his phone_! To be honest, Hiro was still used to using landlines.

"So, how did it go?!" On the other end, Hiro was somewhat surprised to hear Kimiko. She sounded very excited. "Did you say yes?"

Turning to raise his eyebrows at Ando, Hiro replied, "Kimiko, you knew Ando was going to propose? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Anzu told me that Ando had told her when she was at your guys' apartment," Kimiko explained. "I didn't want you to know so that it would be a surprise. But never mind that," she went on, "Did you say yes or not?!"

"…I said yes," Hiro said. Saying it aloud sent a thrill through him, like confirmation that he had indeed accepted Ando's proposal. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. "Say, what if we had our wedding at the same time you and Anzu have yours?"

"A Nakamura family double wedding, hmm?" Kimiko mused. Hiro could tell by her tone of voice that she wasn't big on the idea, which was fine, since it was just something he'd thought of off the top of his head. "That sounds… interesting."

"We don't have to do that," Hiro said quickly. "It was just an idea. Anyways, let's talk about this later, okay? Ando and I have a lot of things to go over."

"Oh, I'd imagine so," said Kimiko, chuckling a bit. "Talk to you soon, little brother. Bye!"

"Bye," Hiro replied, although Kimiko had already ended the call. Slipping his phone into his pocket in case he got any more calls, he turned back to Ando. "Okay, my brand new fiancé," he said with a grin. "I'd say we've got a lot of planning to do."


	9. Chapter 9

A few days after Ando's proposal, the newly engaged couple were invited over to Kimiko and Anzu's place for some collaborative wedding planning. Hiro and Ando weren't planning on getting married for a while—in fact, they hadn't the faintest idea of a good date for the occasion yet—but from the way Anzu had spoken to Hiro over the phone, he'd gotten the feeling it was more of an excuse to talk to him than anything else.

Now, the four of them were hanging out in Kimiko and Anzu's living room, exchanging ideas for their and each other's weddings, as well as just socializing a bit. Kimiko was sitting on the couch with her knees drawn up to make room for Anzu, who was sprawled lazily over the length of the couch, writing in a spiral-bound journal whose cover was the pinks, purples, and whites of the lesbian pride flag. Hiro, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Ando, wasn't sure if the design choice had been intentional (probably not) but it was very fitting nonetheless.

"You see, I going to suggest that you guys could do, like, one of those cutesy themed weddings." Flipping through her wedding planner journal, Anzu tapped on the end of her pen over and over again, creating a series of clicks that was starting to grind on Hiro's nerves. "But I don't know what kind of theme would suit the two of you. So then I thought, why don't we all get together over the long weekend to sort things out?"

Hiro nodded along, glancing sheepishly down at his own wedding planner, in which he had done nothing but doddle hearts and try to work out who should take whose name. So far, he was leaning towards hyphenating their names.

"I wouldn't mind a themed wedding," he said. Turning to Ando, he asked, "What kind of theme would you want? Something generic, or—?"

"Not something nerdy," Ando said matter-of-factly; Hiro was a bit put off by the vehement rejection of something he hadn't even suggested yet. "Sorry, Hiro, but I don't really want any particular theme," Ando elaborated when Hiro pouted a bit. "I'd like us to do things like normal people just this once, okay?"

"Alright, alright," Hiro sighed. It wasn't like he'd been dead-set on doing such a thing in the first place, and he did understand how Ando felt. "But we can't do everything your way either! This has to be a collaborative effort."

"Anzu and I are planning to have a very traditional wedding," Kimiko piped up, putting her arm around Anzu. "It was my idea, but she said she loves it."

Anzu puffed out her chest in pride. "I'm going to wear a tuxedo and everything," she said, raising her hands to her unbuttoned collar to adjust an imaginary tie.

Kimiko giggled, giving her fiancée an affectionate kiss on the cheek. "And you're going to look stunning in it," she said.

"Aww, you flatter me, babe." Blushing, Anzu turned her face away and covered it with a couch cushion.

Hiro was pleased as always to see his sister in such a happy relationship. When they were younger, Kimiko had been fairly popular with the guys, but she'd never exactly seemed content with the ones she'd dated, always pining after the men she knew she could never have. He vaguely remembered her having a girlfriend once in university, but for reasons Hiro had never learned, it hadn't worked out. He realized with a twinge of guilt that in the timeline he'd created by preventing the slushie incident, Kimiko had never dated that girl. Then again, who could say—maybe spending almost half of her life in an ultimately unhappy relationship was what it had taken for her to realize her orientation.

Either way, the fact of the matter was that Kimiko now had a charming, wonderful fiancée who would surely be the best in-law Hiro could hope for. However, just as he was reflecting on this, Anzu blinked, seeming to remember something, and she suddenly got a distant, vaguely anxious look in her eyes. Staring down at the wedding planner journal in her lap, she thumbed backward through the pages until she was near the beginning of the journal—impressively, it was almost filled up, and each individual page was crammed with notes in tiny, neat handwriting that must have belonged to Kimiko. In the later pages, Anzu had been doing more of the writing, and half her characters were barely legible.

Opening the journal to the page she'd been looking for, Anzu showed Hiro and Ando a drawing she'd done in the margins. It was pretty small, and the ink was smudged, so it was hard to see at first. It just looked like a couple of people standing next to each other. Hiro pushed his glasses up and leaned in closer to see what Anzu was showing him this doodle for.

"Hey, it's us," said Ando just as Hiro was coming to that conclusion himself. Anzu hadn't captured their likenesses particularly well, but he couldn't see why else she would want them to see this random drawing she'd done in the margins of her journal.

Anzu gulped, giving Ando a sort of half-nod. "I know it's not a very good drawing," she said, "But that's not the important part."

"I know," said Hiro. "It's the thought that counts. And I do appreciate you wanting to draw us, believe me."

"N…no, that's not it," she said, pointing to the figure standing next to Hiro. "I don't really remember what I was thinking when I drew this, because it was a while back, but this isn't actually supposed to be you, Ando. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be _me_."

Upon closer inspection, this did seem to be the case. The figure next to Hiro was wearing a checkered shirt, which seemed to be one of Anzu's favourite clothing items. Still, Hiro didn't see what was so unusual about this. Then he checked the date of the journal entry. It was several weeks before they'd met.

"…Okay, so you drew this before we'd met in real life," he said. "But you knew Ando and I as comic book characters way before you knew us as real people, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of self-insert content, right?"

Anzu's brow crinkled. She handed the planning journal back to Kimiko, who examined the doodle with a little hum of approval. "See, that's the thing," said Anzu. "I have written some self-insert stuff about you guys before. It was all pretty bad, and I never published it anywhere, but…" She dropped her voice to a whisper, glancing around as though afraid they were being listened in on somehow. "The basic plot was that the two of you were dating, and I got to hang out with you… and I was getting married to Kimiko."

"Whoa," Ando muttered. "This must really be like a dream come true for you, huh?"

However, Hiro was already beginning to put two and two together. "I'd say it's less like a dream come true, Ando," he said, tugging on his fiancé's sleeve, "And more like… a painting."

He motioned toward the glittery poster of him on Anzu's wall. In it, he was wearing a pair of glasses with a light blue frame. He hadn't bought those ones until a little over a year ago, and he distinctly remembered Anzu saying she'd drawn it at least a couple years prior. And then there was that drawing she'd done of him over a decade ago, in which he had on a shirt he'd only bought recently. Everything was coming together now—things Hiro had previously dismissed, but were now adding up.

Ando squinted at the poster. "What are you talking about? That's not a painting; she said she'd drawn it in pencil crayon." Then his eyes widened and he gawked at Hiro. "Wait, you're not saying you think Anzu is—?"

"What are you all going on about?" Kimiko interrupted, placing her hands on her hips. "Anzu, what do they know about you that I don't?"

"We didn't know either until just now," Hiro said, so stunned by his realization that his voice came out quieter than he'd meant.

On the edge of the couch, Anzu shifted awkwardly, staring down at her blistered bare feet. "Yeah, Kim, it probably took me way too long to realize this, but…" She glanced up almost guiltily at her fiancée. "I think I'm a pre-cog."


	10. Chapter 10

With her back to Hiro, Ando, and Kimiko, who were hanging back a respectable distance at her request, Anzu rummaged through her old drawings, which she'd pulled out from a dusty box that had been shoved under her bed. From what Hiro could see over Anzu's hunched shoulders, it looked like quite a lot of artwork. Hiro wondered if Anzu had vied for a career in visual arts in her youth. Maybe she still had a chance to make it as an artist, considering the quality of her more recent works, which she had piled on the bed. Apparently her artistic skills had improved a lot once she had expanded the things she drew and focused less on fanart.

"So my fiancée has powers like you two, huh?" Kimiko muttered, evidently still dazed from the revelation. "I had no idea… she doesn't act at all like you."

Hiro gave his sister a sideways look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, no offense, brother, but…" Kimiko pursed her lips. "You were never exactly a normal boy. I could always tell your life was going to go down a very different path from mine. But Anzu—" Her gaze flashed back over to her fiancée, who was currently flipping through a portfolio crammed full of unfinished lineart. "She just seemed like an ordinary woman. I-if I'd known she was special, I don't know if I would have…"

She trailed off, eyes dropping to the carpeted floor of her and Anzu's bedroom. Hiro wanted to reassure his sister, but he didn't really have a vantage point for what she was feeling right now. Since Hiro himself had a power, he'd never been in the role of an ordinary person finding out that someone he'd thought was "normal" wasn't so after all. On the contrary, he'd always been delighted to find another person like him. To put things in perspective, he tried to imagine a person he'd thought had an ability turning out to be powerless (though he couldn't come up with a hypothetical for why anyone would lie about such a thing), but he honestly couldn't imagine that altering his feelings toward someone he really cared about—his _perception_ of them, sure, but not his relationship to them.

However, while Hiro was puzzling out what to say, Ando spoke up, putting a hand on Kimiko's shoulder. "Listen, I understand what you're going through," he began. "Several years ago, I had a similar experience—isn't that right, Hiro?"

He shot Hiro a nostalgic smile. Hiro blushed, recalling the way their lives had changed upon the discovery of Hiro's power. There were a lot of things from those early days that Hiro deeply regretted now, and things he certainly wouldn't have done if he and Ando had been dating at the time—like falling in love with a woman from the past. Maybe if they'd gotten together sooner, Hiro would have been spared a whole lot of heartache.

"I didn't believe him at first, of course, but before long it was clear he was telling the truth," Ando went on. "The guy I love-loved even back then, although I didn't know it at the time—had a superpower. But that didn't mean he wasn't who I thought he was."

"And when Ando got his power, I didn't stop loving him," Hiro jumped in. He left out how jealous he'd gotten, especially due to himself being powerless at that point in time; this was supposed to convince Kimiko that Anzu was still the same person she'd fallen in love with, not promote envy. "In fact, I was really proud of him! It meant we were finally equals."

"Don't tell her that," Ando hissed. "Kimiko isn't going to give herself a power, and you're making it sound like that's the only way she and Anzu can be on even ground! Besides," he added, narrowing his eyes at Hiro, "I seem to remember you not being too happy about us being equals."

"Sorry, sorry," Hiro sighed, giving his fiancé a pat on the back. "Okay, so at the time I wasn't happy about it. But I'm glad we're equals now, babe!"

Kimiko, who hadn't spoken up during Hiro and Ando's collaborative motivational speech, raised her lips into a half-smile and said, "I appreciate your sentiments, boys, I really do. But…"

She paused, taking another look at Anzu. Papers scattered all around her on the bed and floor, Anzu was now in the process of tidying everything back up again, sorting her work into piles and muttering heavily to herself under her breath. Although she still had her back turned, Hiro could see sweat dripping down the back of her neck; she'd been at this for a while.

"…But what?" Ando pressed when Kimiko didn't finish her thought.

"…But I don't think I can just accept this as easily as you could," Kimiko sighed after a moment. "If Anzu really is a pre-cog, I—I just don't think I can marry her."

Without offering any further explanation, Kimiko swiveled around on her heels and retreated out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. A few moments later, Hiro heard her start crying from down the hall. He wanted to follow her out into the hallway and ask why she was so opposed to marrying someone with an ability—after all, she'd been all set to marry Ando a few years ago—but something told him he'd be better off leaving his sister alone for a while.

"Huh?" Apparently not having heard any of the preceding conversation, Anzu glanced up only when Kimiko started crying. "Hey, Hiro, why'd Kimiko leave the room? And is she _crying_?"

Hiro hadn't expected her to hear it since she was further from the door, but when he didn't answer her, Anzu shook her head and marched over to the door. Hiro moved in front to block her as she reached for the doorknob; he wasn't sure how Kimiko would react to being confronted by Anzu, and he didn't want Kimiko to yell at Anzu for something that wasn't even her fault.

Pushing Hiro aside with an elbow to the ribs, Anzu yanked the door open and stepped into the hall. "Sorry, dude, I don't have time to play around," she muttered as she pushed past Hiro. Then she stopped in the doorframe and turned back to give him and Ando a dour look. "I love you guys, but I swear, if you've done anything to upset my fiancée…"

"We haven't," Hiro said quickly. "She's just… well…"

He bit his lip, feeling guilty despite having no real reason to. It wasn't his fault his sister had fallen for Anzu, and it wasn't his fault or hers that Anzu had a power. It was his fault Kimiko had found out, but he'd assumed she wouldn't mind considering how many people with powers she knew and was on good terms with.

Not waiting around for Hiro to explain, Anzu muttered "whatever" and stomped down the hall to the living room, rapping lightly on the wall to get Kimiko's attention. By now Kimiko had stopped crying, and was merely sitting—or standing, or lying down; Hiro couldn't see from his vantage point—in silence.

"Kim?" Anzu said quietly. "Are you okay?"

There wasn't a reply. Anzu turned to look down the hall back at Hiro, who shrugged, unsure of what to tell her. Eyes narrowing and pressing her lips into a thin line, Anzu beckoned Hiro over. Hiro, who could occasionally take a hint, muttered, "I guess Ando and I should get going now."

"Yeah, that'd be appreciated." Anzu jerked her head back to the old artwork strewn about her room. "Could you tidy that stuff up for me before you leave, though? My back is already killing me from taking it all out."

"But you haven't even looked through your old work yet," Hiro said. "We still don't know if you ever drew anything that's going to happen sometime soon!"

"Yeah, well, maybe you guys were wrong about me being a pre-cog anyway," Anzu said flatly. Stripping off her plaid flannel shirt and tying it around her waist with a sharp tug, she turned back toward the living room, giving Hiro an over-the shoulder look. Before walking through the doorframe, she added, "I think I liked you better as a comic book character than a real person."


	11. Chapter 11

Dismayed but hoping that Anzu didn't mean what she'd said, Hiro retreated into Kimiko and Anzu's bedroom. He closed the door behind him with a sigh, his back sliding partway down the door as he slumped a bit. Ando, who was now sitting on the bed looking over some of Anzu's drawings, glanced up in concern. Not caring to give his fiancé a play-by-play of the exchange he'd just had, but knowing Ando would ask about it, Hiro pre-emptively changed the topic by grabbing a stack of Anzu's artwork and flipping through it for anything worth commenting on.

He found something fairly quickly, which he honestly hadn't been expecting—a drawing of a young woman with flowers in her hair, wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the logo for the university Hiro and Kimiko had both gone to. In fact, upon examining the drawing closer, Hiro was fairly certain that the girl in the drawing _was_ Kimiko—not through facial recognition, because Anzu had given all of her older drawings generic anime-type faces, but by the little strawberry-shaped earrings she wore. Kimiko had owned a pair like that when she was in university; she'd received them from her first girlfriend during their short-lived relationship.

The only reason Hiro remembered any of this was because, while the Nakamura household hadn't exactly been homophobic, the LGBT+ community wasn't something he'd been very aware of for most of his childhood. Therefore, his sister dating a girl had stuck in Hiro's mind—he highly doubted he'd remember as clearly if she'd received the strawberry earrings from a boyfriend instead.

 _But wait_ , Hiro remembered suddenly. In the timeline he'd created where Kimiko had spent the better portion of her life dating Ando, she hadn't had that college girlfriend. At first, Anzu having drawn her long before they met seemed to serve as more proof that Anzu had precognitive abilities, but that didn't explain how Kimiko had gotten a pair of earrings shaped like strawberries in this timeline.

"Ando, babe, take a look at this," Hiro said, leaning over to his fiancé. "You and Kimiko were together the whole time you were in university, right?"

Ando blinked, evidently surprised by Hiro's question. "Of course," he said, setting down the stack of drawings he'd been looking at—from the look of it, mostly still life. "Nowadays I wish we hadn't been—well, that's not entirely true; I love you, but I _was_ really into Kimiko before I found out she wasn't into guys—but yeah, we were together pretty much the whole time."

Hiro's brow creased. He studied the drawing once again. Maybe he'd thought wrong, and it was just supposed to be a random girl and not Kimiko. "…And there was never any point before we got together when either of you was seeing another person?"

"Not that I can remember, no." Leaning over onto his side to look at the drawing Hiro was holding up, Ando traced his finger along the top of the page. It came away dusty; Anzu had kept her artwork tucked away beneath her bed for quite some time. "Why do you ask?"

"Doesn't this kind of look like Kimiko to you?" Hiro asked. He pointed to the earrings. "I seem to recall her owning a pair like that in university, but I don't know who she got them from. Do you remember?"

"Ohh," said Ando, like he was having some great realization. Grabbing the paper from Hiro, who shot him an indignant look, Ando held the drawing up to the ceiling light. "Those were from that girl who was in Kimiko's art class in first year—remember her?"

Hiro didn't know who Ando was referring to, but he assumed it was the same girl Kimiko had dated in the original timeline, so he nodded anyway. It was odd, though; the way he remembered it, the mathematically-inclined Kimiko had only taken that course in liberal arts because her girlfriend (then just a crush) had taken it. In a version of events where Kimiko had been in a committed relationship, it was hard to say how she and the girl from her art class would have become friends.

"I always thought that girl was jealous of me," Ando went on. "Kimiko didn't believe me even though it was obvious her friend had a crush on her. I don't think you ever met her, but I bet the two of you would've gotten along. She was pretty into comics and stuff."

 _Interested in comics… in love with Kimiko… took an art class in university…_ Things started to slide together in Hiro's mind. "Ando, do remember that girl's name?" he asked. He couldn't recall it for the life of him, but all of a sudden he had a sneaking suspicion what it was.

"Oh, I don't know," Ando sighed. "It was all so long ago… I do remember it sounded kind of similar to mine, though—maybe Unko?"

"Or," Hiro said slowly, well aware that he could be completely wrong about this, "could it have been—"

"I just keep wasting my time on you!"

Hiro jumped at the sound of Anzu's furious voice that came ringing down the hall from the living room, accentuated by the sound of a fist hitting the wall. All thoughts of the past forgotten, Hiro sprung to his feet and ran down the hallway, pulling Ando along behind him. In the living room, they found Kimiko and Anzu frozen in place—although not in time, which the analog clock on the wall proved the passage of—like a tableau, their unflinching gazes locked on each other. Both were breathing heavily, and both seemed scared to be the one to make the next move. Kimiko was sitting on the couch with her knees drawn up to her chest, hands clutching a cushion that she held in front of her like a shield. Anzu was leaning over her, lips drawn back in a snarl, her fist resting on the wall behind them, just a couple centimetres above Kimiko's shoulder. That spot in the wall now had a crack where Anzu's fist had landed and blood was starting to pool at Anzu's knuckles; she'd clearly just thrown a pretty hard punch.

Hiro and Ando stood in the door frame, unnoticed by the two women. Hiro wanted to speak up, but he was sure anything he'd contribute here wouldn't be welcome. It seemed as though they might just remain stuck in that position forever until the landline phone on the computer desk rang. Gaze sharpening as though she were snapping back into reality, Kimiko moved to answer it; Anzu stepped aside almost too quickly, grabbed the phone, and thrust it into Kimiko's hands before storming off back toward the bedroom. She pushed past Hiro and Ando without comment; Hiro wondered if she even noticed them standing there.

"H-hello," Kimiko said into the phone, staring wide-eyed after Anzu. A moment's pause, and then, "Sorry, wrong number."

She hung up just as the door to her and Anzu's bedroom slammed shut. As soon as the phone was back on its receiver, its click drowned out by the slamming door, Kimiko's eyes flickered up to rest on Hiro. A mortified look washed over her face.

Hiro expected her to break down crying again, or ask them to leave, or maybe ask how much they'd heard. Instead, she shifted to cover up the bloodstained crack on the wall. "She wasn't aiming for me," Kimiko said with more force than necessary, like she was trying to convince herself more than anything. "It was… a warning. And I deserved it."

"I'm sure you didn't—" Ando began, but Hiro laid a hand on his fiancé's shoulder and shook his head. This was obviously something they should both stay out of.

"…You two should really leave," Kimiko muttered after a moment. Her vacant gaze hovered around Hiro's face, but her eyes never met his. "Anzu and I will talk this over. Alone."

Hiro was reluctant to leave his sister and her fiancée to themselves, fearful that the situation would escalate further, but he gave her a respectful nod and turned to leave. On their way out, Hiro didn't realize his hands were trembling until he took Ando's hand just to feel its warmth in his own. It was a warmth he needed on such a cold winter day. As they stood at the bus stop at the end of the block, Hiro repeatedly tightened and loosed his grip on Ando's hand as an outlet for the anxiety building up within him. Ando didn't comment, but he did raise his free hand to brush some hair out of Hiro's eyes, giving him a soft smile of reassurance. It was empty reassurance, though, because neither of them could know whether or not Kimiko and Anzu would work things out.

It was odd—Hiro had only known Anzu for a few months. It didn't seem like long enough to be as attached to her as he was. Having to pick a side between her and Kimiko would be impossible, and if the couple broke up now, like this… Hiro would be forced to pick a side, he just knew it.

When they were back in their apartment, Hiro collapsed onto the sofa with a sigh and flipped the TV on. He didn't really care what was on; he just needed to take his mind off what had just gone down. After watching a couple minutes of a painfully generic harem anime, he changed the channel to an action show.

"Hey, hey, why'd you do that?" said Ando, reaching for the remote. "Don't you want to see which girl the dude ends up with?"

"Why's it matter?" Hiro said. "They've all got the same face."

"But different _personalities_."

Biting back a laugh as Ando hoisted himself over the back of the couch into Hiro's lap, Hiro tucked the remote behind a pillow so it was out of reach. "You just want to watch that show because the women all have huge breasts," he said mock-accusingly.

Reaching behind Hiro for the remote, Ando fluttered his eyes. "Why, my dear, how could you accuse me of such a thing? You know I watch it for the plot!" He paused, dropping his jokingly offended tone and starting to chuckle. "Wait—wrong word."

"You're such a naughty boy, Ando," Hiro teased. Bringing the pillow out from behind his back, he gently bopped Ando with it. Ando took the opportunity to grab the remote, sneaking in a kiss while he was at it, and changed the channel back to the harem show just as the protagonist ended up facefirst in a girl's skirt—presumably by accident, considering how these shows usually went.

Ignoring the ridiculous, fanservice-y anime completely, Hiro lowered the pillow he was holding and wrapped his arms around Ando, interlacing his fingers behind his fiancé's back. "I love you so much," he murmured. "I can't wait until we get married, babe."

"Me neither," Ando agreed. Dipping his head to kiss Hiro's hand, he added, "We're going to have the best wedding ever."

Hiro nodded vigorously, closing his eyes and trying to picture it in his mind's eye. The thought crossed his mind to ask Anzu to draw him a picture of their wedding, but he didn't know if pre-cogs could take requests—and besides, it would be more fun to see for himself how their wedding would pan out.

Despite their best efforts, not a lot had been written in those wedding planner journals yet. They hadn't even begun to think about where to hold it—because taking Hiro's powers into account, they could have their wedding anyplace or even anytime they wanted. Having infinite options made choosing so hard. And as for who to invite… when he really gave it some thought, there weren't many people Hiro was close to. He'd always been an otaku, and although he kept up good relations with the other people with abilities, it was hard to imagine inviting somebody like Peter or Mohinder to his wedding.

But it wasn't really the ceremony that mattered, did it? The important part was that Hiro would finally be marrying Ando—his colleague, sidekick, best and dearest friend since childhood, and soulmate. The two of them were so lucky to still have each other after everything they'd gone through, and Hiro couldn't wait for them to become husbands. That thought—Ando being his husband—just felt so _right_ , so fundamentally proper, so _inevitable_ to Hiro, like there'd been no other way things could possibly turn out ever since they met in elementary school.

"You're my destiny," Hiro whispered between kisses as he pulled Ando closer to his chest. "And I don't need a pre-cog to tell me that."


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Sorry it's been a while since I uploaded, I've been doing very important things like**

 **Math homework**

 **?**

 **Nothing at all actually**

 **Listening to taz and coming to the conclusion that pylar is the heroes version of johnchurch**

 **Anyway this fic is gonna turn into "Hiro hangs out with my OCs in college" for a bit, sorry**

The muted rumble of late-night traffic filled Hiro's ears like static as he tossed and turned, trying fruitlessly to get to sleep. It wasn't even louder than usual that night; he was just having trouble drowning it out the way he could most nights. Something was pressing on his mind, and he knew he wouldn't get any rest until he worked it out. Finally, he gave up trying to fall asleep and simply laid still on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't want his squirming around to keep Ando awake.

Hiro was almost certain that the girl who'd had a crush on Kimiko in college—who'd been her girlfriend in the original timeline—was Anzu. Anzu's accusation of " _I just keep wasting my time on you_ " furthered that hypothesis, assuming Anzu remembered Kimiko from college. Neither of them had mentioned knowing each other previously, but maybe it just hadn't come up. Either way, there was only one way to know for certain if Anzu had been the girl from Kimiko's art class all those years ago: go back to that time and find out.

As he gingerly shifted off the bed, careful not to disturb his sleeping fiancé, Hiro wondered if he should leave Ando a note or something. He decided against it, though; he'd just make sure to come back to the same time he'd left. Grabbing his glasses off the nightstand, Hiro squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the campus of Tokyo University, in the spring of Kimiko's freshman year.

Sure enough, that was where and when he found himself a moment later. Fortunately, it was still night when he materialized on the campus, so nobody was around to witness a strange man appearing out of nowhere. Of course, this did raise the question of what Hiro would do now—just wait until day? He certainly didn't want to sneak around inside the school in the dark like some kind of stalker. How would he go about conducting this investigation to begin with? Realizing how little he'd thought this through, Hiro cursed under his breath and smacked himself on the forehead.

To his surprise, his self-exasperated curse was met with a sleepy-sounding murmur of startlement. Hiro jumped a little at the unexpected sound, which he realized had come from above him. Turning to look around him (which was of course difficult in the dark, especially since it was a cloudy night) he noticed that he was standing next to a tree. Nestled in the crook of one of the tree's lower branches, about half a metre above Hiro's head, was a formerly sleeping figure, barely visible as an outline against the dark gray sky.

"Oh, no," Hiro muttered aloud, getting a sinking feeling. These types of situations generally didn't pan out well for him. He took a cautious step away from the tree, wondering if he should just call this off and go home, before realizing that panicking would only raise the attention of the person in the tree. Clearing his throat and doing his best to sound like a college-age individual, he said, "S-sorry, I didn't see you there."

"Oh, uh, I didn't see you, either," the kid in the tree replied. "Uh, hang on a sec…"

There was a rustle and bit of fumbling followed by a click, and Hiro was flooded with a pale yellow beam of light. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the flashlight, but once they did, he could make out the other person a bit better. Crouching in the tree, flashing balanced precariously between his knees, was a boy with long bangs that were dyed purple at the tips, an ear piercing in his left ear, and a tattoo peeking out under the right sleeve of his somewhat ratty, paint-splattered gray hoodie. It was immediately obvious that this was an art student, which Hiro found quite promising—maybe this boy knew Anzu.

"There, is that better?" the art student boy said, not bothering to ask what Hiro was doing wandering around on campus so late, and apparently not noticing that Hiro was quite a lot older than any university student. "You can borrow this flashlight if you want, but you'd better give it back, 'cause, uh, I kind of borrowed it myself, so…"

He waved the flashlight up and down as he spoke, making it hard for Hiro to concentrate on what he was saying. "I don't need a flashlight, thank you," Hiro said, shielding his eyes when the beam was pointed directly at his face. "I'm not exactly supposed to be out here," he admitted, "so I don't want to hang around longer than I need to."

"Oh, you're not…?" The kid in the tree leaned forward, squinting. Hiro was worried he'd fall off, but the boy had a tight grip on the branch. "Huh, I thought you were, like, a new professor or something. So, then, um, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, I'm…" Shrinking back a little under the student's suddenly suspicious gaze, Hiro decided it would help to be at least partially truthful. "I have a sister here—Kimiko Nakamura, do you know her? I was in the area, so I thought I'd drop by."

"Hell yeah, I know Kimiko-chan!" The boy broke into a grin. Dropping his flashlight to the ground (in retrospect, maybe Hiro was supposed to have caught that) he swung his legs over the branch and hopped down from the tree. "She's the one I borrowed this from, actually," he went on as he bent down to pick up the flashlight. "Uh, I'm Taro, by the way. What can I call you?"

Hiro opened his mouth to introduce himself, but before he could say his name, Taro groaned and slapped himself on the forehead.

"Oh, right, duh! If you're Kimiko's brother, you must be Hiro, right?" A couple seconds later, Taro's smile twisted into a look of confusion. "Wait a minute, I thought she said you were her _younger_ brother. You're, er… an adult?"

He said the last word as if he wasn't quite sure it was accurate. Hiro chuckled; it wasn't the first time someone had challenged the authenticity of his adulthood. Actually, he was starting to regret starting out so honest. Sure, it would've been hard to pass for a twenty-year-old at his age, but it made more sense than a man in his thirties hanging around the campus of a university he didn't work at in the dead of night.

After a moment, Taro shook his head and placed a hand on Hiro's shoulder; Hiro blinked, surprised at the unexpected contact. "Oh, you're a jumpy one, huh?" Taro said, retracting his hand and stuffing both hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, which were just as paint-splattered as his hoodie. "That's fine. My hands are kinda cold anyways. So, um, I doubt Kimiko'd be up, but how about we head inside? I'm freezing out here."

"Let's do that," Hiro agreed; it sounded like as good a course of action as any. As Taro led him to the university dorms, they made a bit of awkward conversation. As it turned out, Taro had been up in that tree doing a nature sketch for his visual arts class but had fallen asleep when it had gotten dark out. However, it hadn't actually been for his own assignment—it had been for Kimiko's.

"Kimiko took visual arts to hang out with my buddy Anzu, but, well, she's a math and sciences girl through and through," Taro explained. "Kimiko's great, but she can't do art to save her life, so Anzu and I have been doing her assignments for her. I, er, think Kimiko has a crush on Anzu," he added. "And Anzu's _definitely_ got a thing for her. Thing is, Kimiko's got a boyfriend who's gonna be coming here once he finishes junior high—some punk named Ando."

Hiro snorted at Ando being referred to as a punk. His fiancé was one of the least punk people Hiro knew, unless he counted himself. Taro gave him an odd look, but didn't make any inquiries.

"Sooo we've got some kind of love triangle stuff going on," Taro concluded as he came to a stop in front of a dorm room with a sign hanging on the front of the door that said _"Keep out"_ in Klingon. "It's, well, it's weird, but that's college, right?"

"I guess," Hiro said. Pointing to the sign on the door, he remarked, "I guess you're a _Star Trek_ fan?"

Taro's face coloured a little as he opened the door and stepped into his room. "Yeah, a little, I guess," he said. "Uh, and you?"

Hiro grinned. "Yeah, I love _Star Trek_!" he said, doing a little bounce on his heels.

Although he wasn't planning on staying in the past for long, it was always nice to find common interests with someone. Maybe once he got back to his own time, he could try to reconnect with Taro sometime. After all, aside from online forums, Hiro rarely had anyone to talk to about his beloved science fiction franchise. He'd tried several times to get Ando into _Star Trek_ , and although his fiancé had watched a few episodes of the original series and one or two of TNG, their levels of enthusiasm for the franchise would always have quite a large gap. Plus, those online forums weren't always nice. As a biromantic ace, it made Hiro quite uncomfortable to see people complaining about the gay couple on _Discovery_.

Pushing those thoughts to the back of his head, Hiro asked Taro, "So, who's your favourite captain?"

"O-oh…" Taro dropped his gaze to the floor, and then slowly lowered it again—not to look at Hiro, but at the glossy poster of Benjamin Sisko taped to the wall next to his bed. "It's, uh…" Taro looked Hiro up and down apprehensively, as if trying to get a read on who Hiro's favourite captain was (for the record, Hiro liked all the captains equally). "…Kirk?"

Hiro laughed. "You don't have to be shy," he said. "You're not the only _DS9_ fan out there."

Although Hiro tried several times throughout the night to spark up a conversation about _Star Trek_ —or about anything, really—Taro seemed too tired to socialize much more, especially not with someone he'd just met. At around 4:00 am, Hiro fell asleep on the floor next to Taro's bed. The floor—and the dorm in general—was surprisingly clean, although there were a few paint stains here and there.

The next morning, Hiro was woken up by a blaring alarm clock. He winced, covering his ears. The sound came to an abrupt end a moment later, accompanied by a smash; Hiro sat up to see the alarm clock lying in pieces on Taro's bedside table. Taro, whose hair was bedraggled and completely covering his eyes, yawned and then fell back into bed.

Hiro wasn't sure whether to force Taro to get up or not. Sure, having your alarm set for a certain time probably meant you were supposed to be somewhere not to long after, but Hiro hadn't gone back in time to make sure a college student wasn't late to class (would changing whether or not Taro got to class on time change the course of history? Hiro doubted it, but butterfly effect and all that).

Fortunately, Hiro's little ethical dilemma didn't last long. There was some rattling outside the dorm's window, and a moment later a girl with long pigtails which were died bright red cranked the window open and popped out the screen. As she climbed into the room, her eyes met Hiro's and she blinked incredulously at him.

"H-hi," Hiro said nervously. "Are you friends with Taro?"

"No, I'm sneaking into his room to kill him," the girl said sarcastically. "And you're next."

Her voice sounded familiar, and when he gave her a second look Hiro realized why. He hadn't recognized her since she looked so traditionally feminine—she was even wearing a soft pink pajama top with the word _"FEMME"_ emblazoned across the chest in big pink letters—but standing before him was none other than Anzu Noguchi.

"Hey, you look kind of familiar," Anzu said, looking over her shoulder at Hiro as she shook Taro awake. "Hey, 'Ro," she said to Taro as he reluctantly sat up, mumbling about needing more sleep, "I'm pretty sure I drew that guy the other day."


	13. Chapter 13

"I, uh, don't see how you could've drawn him," Taro said, rubbing sleep out of his eyes while Anzu shut the window behind her. In the soft pink light of dawn outside the window, Hiro noticed for the first time how curvy Taro was under his hoodie. "The man's a stranger—er, I think so, anyway. I thought he was Kimiko's brother at first, but, um, he's way too old, so—"

"Listen, 'Ro, I care way less right now about who this guy's related to and a lot more about what the hell he's doing in—wait, did you say Kimiko?" Anzu's cheeks grew a shade of red that matched her hair; Taro gave Hiro a knowing smirk as if to say, _I told you she had a crush on her_.

Taro glanced over at Hiro, who was still staring at Anzu's "femme" top. "Oh, yeah, I guess I didn't mention," he said, hitching his thumb at Anzu. "We're, uh, roommates."

Hiro joined the other two at the window and sat down on the bed just as Taro rolled out of it, stripping off his hoodie to reveal a chest binder beneath it. His eyes met Hiro's for a moment, and he looked terrified that Hiro would comment, but Hiro said nothing. He had a couple of trans friends, and honestly, Taro being AFAB spared Hiro the awkward question of why he was roommates with a girl. What it didn't explain, though, was why Anzu was presenting as femme.

"Dude, quit staring at me like that!" Anzu snapped, giving Hiro a shove. "I guess Taro didn't fill you in on this, but I'm gay," she added more calmly, leaning back and folding her arms across her chest somewhat defensively. "I _so_ don't have a thing for Kimiko, though. Don't believe a thing 'Ro says."

"Oh, really?" Hiro said innocently. "Because I talked to her recently, and I think she likes you."

He hadn't had any concrete plans when he'd decided to go back in time, but he was starting to formulate one now. It might not end up affecting things in the present, or it may even change them for the worse, but Hiro intended to put things back to the way they had been in the timeline where Kimiko and Ando hadn't gotten together. Hiro could see now, after seeing firsthand how good the two women were for each other, that his real sin in altering the timeline wasn't that it had been a selfish act. It had been keeping Kimiko apart from Anzu.

A hopeful expression flashed across Anzu's face, but it vanished as quickly as it sprung up. "Boy, I wish," she grumbled. "But Kimiko is straight."

"Or even if she's bi or a closeted lesbian, I don't think that Masahashi dumbass is going anywhere anytime soon," Taro put in. Pulling a T-shirt with a faded picture of Spock on it over his head, he muttered, "God, I hate that guy."

"Now, Taro-kun, don't be rude," said Anzu. Hiro nodded forcefully in agreement until Anzu added, "You're right, though; he's totally the worst. I'll never understand what Kimiko sees in him."

Although Hiro very much didn't want to blow his cover, mostly because he couldn't trust college-age Anzu and her roommate to keep a secret nearly as much as could trust present-day Anzu, insulting Ando was drawing the line as far as he was concerned. "What's _not_ to like about him?" he countered, pushing up his glasses with a pout.

Anzu barked out a laugh. "Don't tell me you like the dude. He's so… mundane."

"He's got that standard cishet personality," Taro added. "Kimiko says he's planning on coming here when he's done high school. I for one hope he fails his entrance exam."

 _Well, for one thing he's pan, not cishet_ , Hiro thought. _And for another, he's a smart, talented, supportive,_ wonderful _man without whom I wouldn't be alive right now!_ He kept his mouth shut, though, and let Anzu and Taro carry on with their little repartee. There was someone else he needed to find in order to put his plan into action.

In quite the stroke of luck, he found her immediately upon exiting Taro and Anzu's dorm room. Down the hall, there were a few tables set up, presumably for students to study at. The only person there right now was Kimiko, who had a paper laid out in front of her and appeared to be trying to draw as perfect a circle as she could.

Kimiko didn't notice Hiro as he walked up to her, which was probably good, since she certainly would have recognized him. Hiro felt guilty about invading his sister's privacy, but he needed to find something out, so he drew in a breath and froze time.

Upon closer inspection, the circle Kimiko was trying to draw was the base for a drawing of a face; faint pencil lines marked where the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth would be. Kimiko was wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the university's logo, and her hair was parted on the opposite side from how she normally parted it. She looked just how she did in Anzu's drawing of her—except that she wasn't wearing the strawberry earrings.

Never mind that part, though—she was doing her own assignment! But Taro had said he and Anzu did Kimiko's art assignments for her… had Taro lied, or had Kimiko finally decided to do her own work?

Well, there was only one way to find out. Hiro was still afraid of being recognized, but he'd gone back in time before and not had his family members recognize him, and besides, stopping time so he could snoop around always felt bad. Taking a step back so it wouldn't look like he'd just come out of nowhere, he resumed time and then walked back up to Kimiko's table, doing his best to seem student-like.

Kimiko didn't notice him standing over her shoulder, and she didn't look up even when he awkwardly cleared his throat. She must have been pretty deep in concentration, which made Hiro wonder even more about Taro's claims of her lack of an artistic side. Hiro did need to get her attention, though, so he spoke up in hopes of initiating a conversation.

"You're drawing that circle very nicely," he said, and wanted to smack himself as soon as the words left his mouth.

Kimiko jumped a little; putting down her pencil, she glanced up at Hiro, putting on a strained smile. "Th…thanks?"

"You're friends with Anzu Noguchi, right?" Hiro asked. He tapped the drawing on the table. "Is she drawing a picture of you too, or are each of you only doing yourselves?"

"We're supposed to do self portraits, but Anzu has this idea that I can't do art, so she and her roommate have been—" Kimiko broke off, narrowing her eyes and sliding the paper closer to her so Hiro wouldn't touch it. "Hey, I don't have a clue who you are! You can't just jump in and start interrogating me."

She was completely right, of course—Hiro really hadn't thought a single thing through. "It's because… it's because I'm an art student!" he lied. "I could help you with your technique."

Kimiko looked down at her drawing, which still consisted of nothing more than a circle with a few lines sketched on so lightly they were barely visible. Then she looked up at Hiro, and then down the hall, then at her watch, and finally back to Hiro. She hummed in thought, chewing on the end of her pencil—the eraser had already been gnawed off. Hiro glanced up and down the hallway as she mulled it over, keeping an eye on the door to Anzu and Taro's dorm room.

"Thank you very much for the offer, whoever you are," Kimiko said at last, "but I'm not really interested in improving my art skills. I still _try_ to do my own assignments, but…" She sighed, motioning at the paper in front of her. "The only reason I took art was because Anzu was taking it," she admitted, cheeks growing pink.

That blush told Hiro all he needed to know. Kimiko _had_ still taken art so she could share a class with Anzu. Not only that; Kimiko, even in the version of events where she'd already been in a committed relationship, had had a crush on Anzu. Whether she knew it in this timeline or not, the feelings were there—she just wasn't able to act on them.

"Anzu really likes you, you know," Hiro said. He knew he was stepping way out of line, and the incredulous look Kimiko gave him only reaffirmed it, but he felt it needed to be said. Maybe if Kimiko knew that Anzu returned her feelings, she would do what she should have done to begin with—what she would have done if it weren't for Ando—and gone out with Anzu. If the attraction was there, and it was mutual, it was only right for them to act on it.

Pursing her lips, Kimiko shook her head slightly as if to say _no way_. "Anzu is dating Taro, isn't she?" she asked.

"What? No!" Hiro was puzzled; how could Kimiko not know Anzu's sexuality? She certainly wasn't one to hide it; Hiro couldn't think of a time he hadn't seen Anzu wearing a rainbow pin or wristband. "Taro is a boy," he added, in case that had been Kimiko's point of confusion. "I know you don't usually have coed dorms here, but—"

"N-no, I know all about Taro," Kimiko said. Folding her hands in her lap, she stared down at them intently. "I just thought—oh, who am I kidding, I know Anzu likes girls. She told me herself just the other day…"

For reasons unclear, her eyes flitted over to her shoulder bag, which was lying on the floor propped up against the leg of the table to keep it from falling over and its contents from spilling out the top. The bag was bursting with papers—not in an unorganized sense; there were simply too many papers and books inside the bag to all fit neatly. When Hiro followed her gaze, trying to figure out what relevance the contents of her bag may have held, she frowned, blushing, and prodded it with her feet so it was out of Hiro's line of sight.

Just then, the door to Taro and Anzu's dorm room swung open with a bang, and the two students burst through, cackling hysterically. Anzu's raucous laughter reverberated down the hallway as she grabbed a frisbee from Taro's hand—why Taro had a frisbee on his person, Hiro had no clue—and flung it down the hall. Thankfully, Anzu threw the frisbee in the opposite direction from Hiro and Kimiko, but Kimiko still flinched when Anzu laughed.

"Whoa-ho, nice arm!" Taro cried in delight as he ran to catch the flying disk. He missed by a long shot; the frisbee ended up coming to a skidding halt a few metres down the hall. "Hey, Zuzu, are you, uh…" He paused, leaning against a wall to catch his breath. "Do you, um, plan on using that arm to, y'know… impress the ladies?"

"You betcha, 'Ro," Anzu replied, wiping sweat off her brow. "Arms like these'll turn a straight girl gay. Speaking of which—hey, Kim!"

Turning to look at Kimiko, Anzu waved, grinning with a flush in her cheeks Hiro knew wasn't just from exercise. Kimiko blushed heavily and looked away; Anzu's broad shoulders drooped and her grin faded. She had changed into a T-shirt and jeans, which looked a lot more like something that present-day her would wear, meaning Hiro felt a lot less off-put looking at her now. Taro was too far away for Hiro to tell, but it looked like he was still in his paint-stained hoodie and sweatpants.

Paying no mind to how obviously flustered Kimiko was, Anzu strolled over to her table and plopped herself down right on top of Kimiko's sketch. "Yo yo yo, it's Kimiko!" Anzu singsonged, laughing at the shy smile and barely audible "hi" Kimiko gave her in response. "Class is gonna start soon, Kim. You oughta hurry up. I'd…" Anzu faltered, her voice dropping a few decibels as her already pink cheeks darkened into a bright red. "…I'd really hate for you to fall behind."

"Oh, Anzu-chan, that's so sweet," said Kimiko. She gave Anzu a cheesy grin. "You really have a soft spot for me, don't you?"

"Uh—n-no, I— well I d…" Anzu sputtered, drawing her knees up to her chest; Hiro was sure he could actually see her hair bristling like a cat as she metaphorically stumbled over herself. If she weren't situated firmly on top of the table, she probably would have literally stumbled as well. "I don't think that means anything," she managed. "You'd probably hate for that Masahashi boy of yours to get a poor mark too, right? Ah—not that it's the same or anything…"

"Ando's grades could be better," Kimiko admitted, deflating a little as if she'd just remembered that she had a boyfriend. "I think Hiro is a bad influence—they both spend too much time playing video games instead of studying."

"Well, that's—" Anzu began, but she was interrupted by Taro, who had made his way back down the hall, frisbee in hand.

"Uh, hi, Kimiko-chan—oh, I'm sorry to interrupt…" said Taro. "I, er, see you've met my, uh, my fellow _DS9_ fan? Oh, um, this dude here's got the same name as your little brother, doesn't he?"

"Well, Hiro isn't that unusual a name," Kimiko said. "And Nakamura is quite a common family name." However, she glanced Hiro over, brow furrowing, as if she were thinking, _although now that you mention it…_

"So, yeah, Zuzu's probably right," Taro said, glancing at his watch. "We've, uh, gotta get to class. Er, see you around, Hiro? I, um, I don't know if we actually will, but—"

"We'll keep an eye out for you," Anzu supplied, hopping off the desk. For a moment she looked like she wanted to grab Kimiko's hand, and Kimiko looked like she wanted the same, but Anzu shook herself and headed off down the hall with Taro, leaving Kimiko to her own devices.

Kimiko stared wistfully after Anzu as she walked away. "You could go after her, you know," Hiro told her. "If you like her, you should tell her."

"I wish," Kimiko sighed. "But I'm seeing this guy—we've been together since junior high, and he's best friends with my little brother, so if we broke up now it would just be so awkward."

"Well… maybe you and Ando aren't as right for each other as you think," Hiro said. He wanted to say more, but anything else would suggest he knew more than he had any excuse to.

"Well…" Kimiko tucked her pencil behind her ear, grabbed the unfinished sketch, and balled it up in her hand before jamming it in her shoulder bag. "…Maybe."

She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. When she did, something slid out the top as she walked down the hall in the opposite direction from Anzu. Kimiko kept walking without stopping to pick it up, but she did hesitate for a split-second, so Hiro knew she'd noticed.

Well, if Kimiko didn't mind losing it, hopefully she wouldn't mind if Hiro took a look. He bent down and picked up what had fallen—a note written on pastel pink cardstock in bright purple gel pen. The note read:

" _Hey, Kim, about yesterday in art… I'm sorry. I thought I felt something there, and I was totally out of line, and I'll never try to ask you out again. Anyway, in case you haven't guessed, I'm gay! Figured you should know. But you're obviously straight, and that's totally cool, and I hope you and Blando have lots of fun together. Hey, sorry, that was mean. Ando's a great guy, I'm sure. I just really like you, and you don't like me, and whatever, y'know? It's all cool._

 _XOXO (Except not really 'cause you're not into that)—Anzu Noguchi."_

On the back of the note, Hiro's fingers brushed against something plastic. Curious, he flipped the card over. Taped to the back was a pair of earrings shaped like strawberries, still in their package.


	14. Chapter 14

"…And that's when I decided to come back to the present," Hiro said, rolling onto his back and stretching. "I really wanted to help, but sadly, it didn't seem like there was much I could do."

It was the morning after he'd gone back in time to the university, and Hiro was feeling pretty defeated. Anzu had come out to Kimiko, tried to ask her out, and gotten rejected. Then somehow twenty years later they'd met back up and fallen in love. The fact that Hiro had, albeit indirectly, caused this was still gnawing on the back of his head. Plus, he still didn't totally get why the present-day discovery that Anzu had precognitive abilities was such a hang-up for Kimiko.

"Well, that sucks." On the floor next to their bed, Ando flipped listlessly through an old comic book that Hiro had left lying around. "But hey, at least you know a bit more about Anzu's past."

"But what I know just gives me more questions than answers!"

Just as he said that, Hiro's phone rang. Not wanting to leave the fluffy blanket he was lying on—his trip to the past had worn him out—he leaned over to the bedside table and fumbled around for the phone. He grabbed it just a few seconds before it would have gone to voicemail, not bothering to check the caller ID. He had a feeling it would either be Anzu or Kimiko anyway.

As it happened, he was right. "Yo, Hiro," Anzu's sleepy voice greeted him over the phone. "Listen, man, I'm really sorry about last night…"

"You don't have to explain anything," Hiro said quickly.

"No, no, I do," said Anzu. Upon closer listening, maybe her voice wasn't rough because she was tired—maybe it was because she'd been crying. "Look, Hiro, the thing about me is I've got a bad memory, especially where my college days are concerned. Heck, my roommate was my best bud, and I can't for the life of me remember his name—"

"Taro," Hiro supplied.

"Right, it was Ta—wait, how do you know that?!" Suddenly Anzu sounded a lot more alert. "Hey, Hiro, did you go back in time to spy on me and Kim?"

Biting his lip, Hiro glanced at Ando and mouthed "should I tell her?" Ando shrugged and went right back to rummaging through Hiro's old comics. Hiro made a mental note to tidy those away as soon as possible.

"Actually, don't even bother," Anzu said. "I remember you being there! Yeah, you just showed up one day acting like you had some business with Kim, and we all kinda went along with it. Holy crap," she added, voice dropping a few decibels. "How did I not know what was up when I read about you in _Ninth Wonders_? You had the same name and everything."

"That is odd," Hiro agreed, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he spoke. He was dying to ask about exactly how things had played out between her and Kimiko, and if they were breaking up or staying together, but he held his tongue and waited for Anzu to bring it up first. "But if your memory's as bad as you say it is, it's understandable."

"Oh, right, that's what I meant to tell you!" Over the phone, Hiro could hear Anzu take a deep breath and let it out as a sort of combination of a sigh and a groan. "The whole thing about me punching the wall? You call mark that down as pent-up anger over being rejected in college. Thing is, I didn't remember it was Kimiko who'd turned me down until that night—or I hadn't put together that it was the same person. And I'm not so sure she had, either… until I pulled out my old artwork and she saw some stuff of mine I reckon she recognized."

Hiro gulped. "Like the portrait of her with the earrings."

There were a few moments of silence, and Hiro was beginning to wonder if the connection had gone offline when Anzu spoke up again.

"Yeah," she said, and this time she definitely sounded tired. "Listen, dude, I… I'm crazy in love with Kimiko. I didn't mean to snap at her like that last night. I just… I want her to love me as much as I love her! Is that too much to ask?"

"Well, don't tell all that to me," said Hiro. "Tell it to Kimiko."

"…You know what? You're so right," Anzu replied. "Bye, Hiro."

She hung up, and Hiro set the phone down with the beginnings of a smile on his face. He hopped off the bed and sat down beside Ando, his back to the dresser.

"I take it they're going to talk things over?" Ando said.

"Yup!" Grinning, Hiro snuggled up against his fiancé. "So… what are you reading?"

"Oh, this?" Ando held the comic up so Hiro could see. When he did, Hiro realized that, despite his clearly having had it for some time, he didn't remember owning this comic. "Anzu lent it to me a few weeks back; she said it had been her most exciting find ever when she bought it at that gay bookstore last year."

Intrigued, Hiro took a closer look at the comic. Apparently it belonged to a series called _LGBTokyo: a semi-true-to-life college anthology_. The cover showed an open field at nighttime, dotted with a few trees. Front and centre stood a man who looked suspiciously familiar. At the bottom, in flashy red text, there was a text bubble announcing, "this issue: a trans guy and his lesbian roommate receive a visit from a familiar face for fans of the _Ninth Wonders_ series!"

"That's me," Hiro said, fighting back a grin.

"Yeah, apparently this was written and drawn by some dude Anzu went to college with," Ando said. "Although I'm pretty sure he was afraid of getting sued by Isaac Mendez, because he changed your name and made you... well, just take a look."

Ando handed the comic over, open to the first page. Hiro bit back a laugh upon seeing the very first panel—Taro and Anzu in their college dorm, each with a girl hanging around their arm. "It's another ordinary night," Anzu was saying; Taro was replying with "I wonder if anything cooler is happening outside…" On the next page, there was an establishing shot of the campus, followed by a couple panels of Hiro slinking around like a cat, complete with shuffling sound effects.

Hiro skimmed over the next few pages; they were mostly just filler involving the awesome frat party that Anzu and Taro had almost certainly never had in real life. His proper introduction was about a third of the way through the comic, when Taro was chased out of the building by a gang of people shouting slurs. There was a panel that consisted entirely of the word "SLICE!" in big bubble letters, and then a full-page illustration of Hiro in the samurai garb he'd worn in the future wherein New York had been destroyed… only here, Hiro's outfit was in the colours of the transgender flag, and he had a bright pink mohawk. He was cutting down the people who'd attacked Taro, who waited until three pages later to exclaim "I don't believe it!"

"Me neither, Taro," Hiro muttered as he flipped through the rest of the ridiculous comic. "Me neither."

Ando grabbed the comic and rolled it up like a newspaper. Putting on an exaggerated tough-guy voice, he said, "Prepare to be vanquished by me, #1 ally Harou Nakajima!"

"Is that what they changed my name to?" Hiro giggled. Not bothering to find out for himself, he took off his glasses and furrowed his brow. "It's me, Hachiro Nishimura!"

"From hit comic series _eighth mysteries_ ," Ando put in.

"Shiro Nakayama from _tenth questions_."

Ando raised his hand in the _nya_ gesture. "Hewwo, I'm Hiro Nyakapurra, the time-travelling kitty cat!"

Toppling onto the floor laughing, Hiro shook his fist at the air. "I… I'll defend my Clan from college students!"

"Best Warriors OC ever."

"And the best part is," Hiro said, propping himself up to give Ando a kiss on the hand, "he's got the best fiancé in the whole forest."


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: God, it's been forever. I don't even know what happened with this story. Anyway, this is the last chapter, so,,, yeah.**

It was nice to goof off and alleviate tension, and Hiro soon got so caught up in joking around with Ando that he almost forgot about matters at hand. As such, he was caught completely by surprise at a quarter to noon when the doorbell rang.

"I—I'll get it," Hiro managed to get out, although by that point he was cackling so hard (at things that objectively probably weren't all that funny) that he could barely talk. Wiping sweat off his brow, he got up from where he'd been rolling around on the floor and went to answer the door. When he opened it, he was pleased to see Kimiko and Anzu standing next to each other, hand in hand. Needless to say, the two of them looked pretty happy about it too.

"Hi," Anzu said. Then she looked Hiro up and down, eyes widening, and cringed. "Aw, man, I guess we really caught you at a bad time."

Hiro was confused at first until he looked down at his rumpled clothes, felt how hot his cheeks were, and realized how fast and heavy he was breathing. Blushing, he waved his hand. "N-no, it's not… we weren't, um…" He trailed off, realizing he sounded like Anzu's college roommate with how much he was hemming and hawing. "I'm ace, so I'm not really into that kind of thing anyway."

"Well, whatever," Anzu said with a shrug, moving past Hiro into the apartment and hanging up her coat. She was shivering a bit; Hiro noticed that all the buttons on her plaid flannel shirt were done up, which was a rarity for her. "Man, it's freezing out there! So, guess what we came all the way here in the rain to tell you guys?"

"You'll be pleased to hear that Anzu and I talked things over," Kimiko said, not giving Hiro a chance to guess—not that he'd have really needed to anyway. "We're both sorry for the things we said last night, and we both think it's in our best interests to stay together."

"Yep, it's like they always say," Anzu said with a grin. "A little precognitive ability can't get in the way of true love!"

"Do they always say that?" Kimiko gave Anzu a teasing smile. "I've never heard that one before."

From where he was still laying on his back flipping through Taro's comic, Ando lifted is head to glance up at Kimiko. "Hey, that's great!"

"It is great," Hiro agreed with a grin. Bouncing on his heels, he turned back to Anzu, motioning to the comic Ando was flipping through. "So, you lent him that, huh? I don't think it existed before I went into the past."

"Yeah, Taro and I are still pretty close; he's a super cool dude," Anzu said. Sitting down on the floor next to Ando, she took the comic from him without asking (Ando looked a bit miffed; but he didn't outwardly object) and glanced it over fondly. "His _LGBTokyo_ series is pretty fun, but this is definitely its best-known issue. Nobody's quite sure if it's meant to be taken seriously or not—don't tell the general public, but it's definitely not."

Hiro shot Ando a look, raising his eyebrows. He thought it would be best not to mention that the two of them had just been making fun of the issue's contents—even if it was meant to be comedic in nature, which certainly seemed to be the case. In fact, now that he thought about it, Hiro had no idea why he'd assumed a bootleg version of himself dressed in a pride flag had been anything but an affectionate parody.

It occurred to him that neither Taro nor anyone else who'd read the actual _Ninth Wonders_ series would have known that Hiro and Ando weren't straight either. Even Claire, who had figured out her sexuality long before they had, was probably still heterosexual as far as most readers were concerned, considering where the comic had left off. It was a shame too, considering how much some people needed to see that kind of representation in their media. If Hiro had seen more same-gender couples in media growing up, he probably would have realized he was bi much earlier on, and Kimiko would have figured out she was a lesbian instead of spending most of her life wondering why the only _Star Trek_ episode she'd agree to watch with Hiro was _Rejoined._

As Anzu thumbed through the comic with the countenance of someone who was long familiar with every beat of the story, Kimiko pulled Hiro aside to talk with her in the kitchen. There was a twinkle in her eye as she spoke.

"Hiro, thank you for helping Anzu talk some sense into me," she said. "I love her, I really do, and I was a fool to care that she has powers. So, out of gratitude, I'm going to offer you a small favour. Do you remember how you agreed to give me away when Anzu and I get married?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I was wondering if you'd let me return the favour when you marry Ando."

"Oh, that'd be lovely!" Hiro was pleasantly surprised; he'd been expecting something more important, and he didn't want to be given that much thanks in return for something he hadn't played too big a part in. Despite his time-travel-related efforts, Kimiko and Anzu had stayed together of their own volition, because they loved each other and knew it was better that way. "It even makes more sense this way, since you're the older sibling."

"I suppose it would," said Kimiko. Looking over her shoulder at Anzu, she beckoned her over; Anzu blinked and did a sort of clumsy somersault over the carpet before landing on her feet and calmly walking the rest of the way. "What was that for?" Kimiko asked, biting back a snicker as Anzu brushed herself off.

Cracking her head to the side like an anime character, Anzu smiled. "Why else? I wanted to show off to my girlfriend."

"That's valid," Hiro said before realizing that the couple probably didn't want his input. Stepping out of the kitchen, he asked, "should I leave you two alone, or are we all just going to talk together?" He glanced back over at Ando—was he seriously still lounging around on the floor? "Because if we're all going to talk, it'd be more convenient to just do it in the living room…"

Kimiko's cheeks reddened as she glanced around the cramped space. "I… I guess you're right," she muttered, cringing.

As they sat down on the sofa, Anzu clapped Kimiko on the back. "Bet you thought the disaster lesbian was a myth, huh?"

"Oh, I knew it wasn't a myth," Kimiko said. "What did you think I thought you were?"

" _Ouch_ ," Anzu complained, drawing back and clutching an imaginary wound. "Babe, you wound me so with your words."

There were only three seats on the couch which were taken by Hiro, Kimiko, and Anzu respectively, so Ando sat himself down on the arm of the couch and slung his arm around Hiro. Well accustomed to his fiancé using putting his arm around him as a cover for stealing pillows, Hiro pressed his back tighter against the back of the couch so Ando couldn't slip the pillow out from behind him. True, Hiro was just as if not more likely to steal pillows, but that was only because they were soft and fluffy. Ando probably just did it to annoy him. Still, whatever his motivations, Hiro was always all about physical affection.

Anzu clapped her hands twice like somebody about to address a big crowd even though she was talking to three people who were all seated on the same couch as her (it was a tight squeeze). "So, I've got a pretty big announcement to make," she began, smiling from ear to ear. "I'm going to be collaborating with my old friend Taro on a project. He's going to be drawing and colouring it, and I'm going to be doing the writing and storyboarding… well, technically all the writing was done in the past? Or by fate or something? But I'm probably going to tweak it a little and make up most of the dialogue."

It didn't take too long to figure out what she was getting at. "Are you doing a—" Hiro began, right before Anzu confirmed his guess with an enthusiastic squeal.

"I'm writing a continuation to _Ninth Wonders_!"

She was quickly met with congratulations. (Hiro started clapping, but Ando and Kimiko kept their hands in their laps, so he felt kind of awkward and stopped clapping after a couple seconds.)

"Awesome!"

"Oh, cool!"

"When are you going to start work on it?"

"I already have…sort of," Anzu explained. "See, I don't remember most of the stuff that you guys said happened between then and now—" she gestured at Hiro and Ando— "but I do remember seeing some pictures floating around the internet that were supposedly the last things Mendez-san drew of you guys. You may recall it was kind of a cliff-hanger, so I wrote some fix-it fic, and I think it's safe to say it turned out pretty true-to-life."

Ando raised his hand. "Can you leave out the part about me passing out?"

"Nah. It shows you have character." Leaning over to whisper in Hiro's ear, Anzu added, "Plus, I just thought it was funny."

"One more question," Kimiko said. "What are you going to call it? Won't you have some issues with copyright?"

Anzu sighed and slumped down a bit, which Kimiko made a _tsk-tsk_ sound at; Hiro harkened back to a childhood of being scolded for bad posture. "Yeah, copyright sucks, so it's not like I'll be able to call it _Ninth Wonders Reborn_ or something," she said. "Or like, _The Next Generation_ —not that it's a new generation, because it's still just you guys—whatever, you get the idea. Anyway, I haven't decided on a name yet."

"Tenth wonders," Hiro suggested, mostly jokingly. However, Anzu actually seemed to consider it for a moment before she wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

"Nah, I'll probably go with something unrelated to the original title," she said. "One thing I do know, though, is that I'm gonna make it even gayer than in real life."

A few months later, on another rainy day, Hiro happened to pass by the comic book store where Anzu worked. He hadn't seen her there in a while; he wondered if she quit. He hoped for her sake that she hadn't; Kimiko's office job paid pretty well, but Anzu shouldn't rely on her wife for _all_ her income. He didn't see her through the store window, but he did see something displayed among the new releases being advertised up on stands next to the cardboards cutouts and novelty items (who'd want a lamp shaped like a zombie hand anyway? Admittedly, Hiro would have, but he got the feeling Ando wouldn't be too keen on it).

The front cover of the comic was drawn in a surprisingly shoujo-esque style, depicting Hiro and Ando reaching for each other with a giant clock in the background which Hiro assumed was symbolic. Below the cover art was the title, in swooping cursive letters—" _Evolving Hearts_ ¸ volume 1: _Red Lightning and Soft Lighting_!" Hiro wondered if Anzu should have consulted her friends about the name after all, but as he examined the cover art another person walking by on the street stopped to look as well, and after a moment murmured curiously and headed into the store.

Hiro wanted to go in and buy it himself, but somebody would be bound to notice that he looked just like one of the people on the cover. He realized that if this series took off, he and Ando might really have to keep their heads down. Since their wedding was only a few weeks away, though, maybe somebody would buy the comic for them as a wedding gift.

Oh, what the hell? Hiro would just buy it now. And if somebody in the store recognized him, well… Hiro smiled to himself as he traced his finger across the glass over the words "story by Anzu Noguchi". Being recognized hadn't hurt him too badly the last time.

~end~


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